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In cases where one is trying to use FTP from behind a firewall or from an
IP address assigned by the NAT of a router, the ftp utility needs some extra command line options to
function properly. This has to do with active/passive ftp, which is well described
here.
The solution that I have found to work in my particular situation is to issue the following commands
after connecting to the ftp server:
ftp:> epsv
This turns off extensive passive mode
ftp:> passive
This turns off passive mode.
Once these two commands have been issued, everything seems to work just fine. Without them
the server appears to hang up, or perhaps try to contact the client on a port which is
being blocked by a firewall.
NOTE: I only have to do this on my Mac. For some reason, the Windows ftp utility works fine.
In fact, the Windows utilitiy does not recognize the epsv or passive commands.