About firewalls

Some organizations separate their local networks from the rest of the Internet by installing a "firewall" or "gateway." A firewall is a system or software which is configured to prevent particular types of access/information from entering the network. Most firewalls block the flow into the local area network, but allow individuals to access most resources outside of the network.

WS_FTP lets you enter information about a firewall into a firewall configuration, which you can then use when connecting to an FTP site from behind that firewall. You can configure the firewall once, and then assign that firewall configuration to whatever sites need to use it.

Multiple Firewalls

There are several reasons you might want to create more than one firewall configuration. If you use a laptop computer in different locations that have different firewalls, you will want to set up a firewall configuration for each location, so you can switch to the appropriate firewall configuration when you are in each location.

Another reason you might want to set up multiple firewall configurations is that your network could have more than one router configured as a firewall. In this case, you would assign a different firewall configuration to an FTP site depending on which part of the network you are working from.

Furthermore, you might have a number of "trusted sites" (for example, FTP sites set up by your own company) for which you would use a different firewall (or no firewall).