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Unquestionably the premier FTP server for Windows 95/NT, War FTP Daemon is an excellent freeware server designed to meet and exceed all of your needs, whether you’re a novice just starting out or a pro wanting to host a variety of virtual FTP servers. War FTP excels in numerous areas including performance, ease of use, support for virtual servers, price (or lack thereof), security options, customization capabilities, and the most extensive feature-set available for a FTP server. The daemon is also compatible with every major FTP client, including Cute-FTP, WS_FTP, and the server’s own companion client, War FTP, as well as the built-in FTP clients of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator.
Among the server’s many features are multithreading capabilities, multihoming/multihosting support (allows you to setup multiple virtual FTP servers on the same machine), open standards compliance (with full support for RFC 959 and 1123), a BBS-like Windows interface (one that’s intuitive enough but unfortunately not all that attractive), a system traybar icon (changes color when online/offline and when users connect/disconnect), support for ABORt and REST commands, ability to run as a Windows NT system service, proxy/firewall support, online and offline modes of operation, import database capabilities for FTP Serv-U, full OLE support, an option for handling ‘brain-dead’ ISPs (those that try to block out personal FTP sites), a virtual file system for improved performance and functionality, an automatic shutdown option, context-sensitive help, and support for long filenames.
Unquestionably the premier FTP server for Windows 95/NT, War FTP Daemon is an excellent freeware server designed to meet and exceed all of your needs, whether you’re a novice just starting out or a pro wanting to host a variety of virtual FTP servers.
What really sets War FTP Daemon apart from the competition is its extensive security capabilities. Numerous configuration options are available for each user, group of users, class of users (guest, sysadmin, user, or visitor), or all users (default security preferences). In addition to non-security related features like personalized greetings, security options that can be set include upload/download restrictions and ratio options for both anonymous and regular users, extensive logging capabilities (tracks number of times connected, files uploaded, files downloaded, etc.), file access permissions (read, write, execute, and delete options that can be set for specific files and directories), access restrictions (by password or e-mail address), file ban capabilities, limits on the maximum number of concurrent connections, and access list masks.
Configuration and administration tasks are made simple by War FTP Daemon’s intuitive interface and its easy-to-follow menu options. You can even select to have the interface hide the more complex options if you’re a beginner (all program options are displayed by default). The server also offers context-sensitive help as well as exensive help information available via the Web site’s technical support section (including the War FTPD FAQ) for users in need of assistance in setting up and administering the server. Additional help is available in the form of an e-mail support address at support@mail.jgaa.com and a public newsgroup at alt.comp.jgaa.
The best news is that most users won’t even need to access any of the help resources. You can be up and running your own FTP site with War FTP Daemon right after installation, or you can choose to first customize the server before hosting a site. When running War FTP Daemon the system traybar icon will display different colors depending on the status of the server — light blue for when the server’s offline, yellow for when the server’s online but idle (no connections), and green for when online and serving one or more connections.
You can also extend the capabilities of the server by downloading one of several War FTP Daemon utilities located on the War FTP Daemon page. Among the utilities are DevScript, a plug-in upload processing script that allows for archive testing and similar file operations, and Process32, a plug-in verification script designed to check compressed archives that have been uploaded to your site.
The Internet community has been anticipating the next major release of War FTP Daemon, v1.70, for some time now — and for good reason. The new version is now in beta release and although it has been delayed several months, the wait should be worth it. A wide array of new features will make their debut in v1.70. One of the most important additions will be remote administration capabilities with full access to the management display when the server is running as a Windows system service. The new version will also be able to use the Windows NT user database as an integrated part of the server’s own user database.
Additional features will include disk quota limitations, a War Daemon Manager for administering the server, a remote administration API, new text macros, expiry methods on user accounts, time-of-day login restrictions, a low-level socket engine, and an entirely redesigned interface. Versions for Linux and a variety of Unix platforms are expected to finally debut shortly after the release of v1.70 for Windows 95/98/NT.
Pros: Excellent set of features, extensive security options, the premier FTP server, freeware!
Cons: Requires either Windows 95/98 or Intel version of Windows NT and a 486+ processor
New: War Daemon Manager (true remote administration capabilities), entirely redesigned interface and revamped codebase, enhanced security, improved multithreading/performance; Release Notes
New in 1.70 Beta: Public beta release and first DEC Alpha release (see above for new features)
Upgrade Meter: 3
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Version Reviewed: 1.70 Beta 1.4 |
