A server is nothing but a program that runs on a computer and listens for requests.
Servers listen on a port, and there are a set of standard ports. For instance, web servers listen on ports 80 (http) and 443 (https), and SSH/SFTP servers listen on port 32.
Things like iCloud or box.net are probably based on a mixture of SFTP and HTTPS. I mean even SFTP is still going to have file commands: dir, cd, get, put… and after that it’s just up to the client application (e.g. your browser or app) to decide what to do with that data.
In the larger scheme of things, SFTP or HTTPS are just conduits for data. Your server program will still need to understand the request coming in from the client, assemble the response, then send it. Likewise if the client wants to send something, the program will need to use the conduit to receive it, then do something with it – like store it in the client’s directory.
A server is nothing but a program that runs on a computer and listens for requests.
Servers listen on a port, and there are a set of standard ports. For instance, web servers listen on ports 80 (http) and 443 (https), and SSH/SFTP servers listen on port 32.
Things like iCloud or box.net are probably based on a mixture of SFTP and HTTPS. I mean even SFTP is still going to have file commands: dir, cd, get, put… and after that it’s just up to the client application (e.g. your browser or app) to decide what to do with that data.
In the larger scheme of things, SFTP or HTTPS are just conduits for data. Your server program will still need to understand the request coming in from the client, assemble the response, then send it. Likewise if the client wants to send something, the program will need to use the conduit to receive it, then do something with it – like store it in the client’s directory.