FTP Test

This test emulates a user connecting to an FTP server and performing an operation on the server. The operation may either be a GET or a PUT. For the specified operation, this test measures the availability of the FTP server and its response time.

Target of the test : A Microsoft FTP server

Agent deploying the test : An internal/remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the target Microsoft FTP server monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameters	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The hostname (or IP address) of the FTP server.
Port	The port number on which the FTP server is listening.
User	The user name used for connecting to the FTP server.
Password	Password corresponding to the user.
Confirm Password	Confirm the password by retyping it here.
RemoteFile	The remote file that is downloaded in the case of GET operation; In the case of a PUT operation, the remote file represents the file to which data is uploaded.
LocalFile	The local file that is written to in the case of a GET operation. In the case of a PUT operation, this string represents the name of the file that is uploaded to the FTP server. This value can be “none” if the test is not required to write the downloaded data to a local file.
CMD	Signifies the command to be executed by the test whether GET or PUT .
Timeout	The maximum time (in seconds) that the client will wait for a response from the FTP server.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Availability	This measurement indicates whether the server was able to respond successfully to the query made by the test.	Percent	Availability failures could be caused by several factors such as the FTP server being down, the FTP server being misconfigured, authentication problems, file access permission problems, network failures, etc. Temporary unavailability may also occur if the FTP server is overloaded.
Total FTP response time	This measurement indicates the total time taken by the server to respond to the requests it receives. This time includes the TCP connection time, user authentication time and the data transfer time.	Secs	An increase in the total response time can occur because there are too many simultaneous requests or because of a bottleneck with any of the applications executing on the server.
Tcp connection availability to FTP port	This measure indicates whether the test was able to successfully establish a TCP connection to the FTP server.	Percent	Availability failures could be caused due to a network failure. Another possibility is that the FTP application server is not running.
Tcp connection time to FTP port	The time taken for the TCP connection establishment to complete.	Secs	A high value indicates a bottleneck and could be due to the reasons that the server is being overloaded or there has been a network performance degradation.
FTP authentication status	Indicates whether the test was able to successfully log in to the FTP server using the specified user account.	Percent	A low value indicates a problem logging in to the server.
FTP authentication time	Time taken for user authentication.	Secs	This value gives an idea of where the performance bottleneck with the FTP server could be.