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A review: Remote file manager for Android platform using FTP4Android

Conference Paper · July 2013

DOI: 10.1109/WOCN.2013.6616198

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 A Review: Remote File Manager for Android
Platform using FTP4Android
Tanuj s. Rohankar, Rakesh Bhujade, Amit Sinhal, Bhupendra Verma
Department of Information Technology
Technocrats Institute of Technology,Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India
tanujrohankar@gmail.com, rakesh. bhujade@gmail.com, amit_sinhal@rediffmail.com, bk_verma@rediffmail.com

Abstract-- In today's era it is common to handle any type of file
with the personal computer. The introduction of mobile device
makes a huge revolution in the field of computer. Unfortunately,
the storage capacity of these devices is limited; it may hence be
useful to have the possibility to store the files on the web and
retrieve them at anytime and anywhere. To satisfy this need,
FTP4Android is available, but this protocol having some
drawbacks. Our aim is to overcome that problem. Our solution
provides enhancement to the FTP4Android by overcoming their
drawback. In this dissertation work we proposed the
compression technique which will be use to increase the speed of
transmission. Also we provide solution over inconsistency and
security. With this enhancement Smartphone users will
smoothly transfer process both in upload and download, parallel
transmissions to/from different servers are performed.
Keyword:-FTP4, FTP, GP Zip, NFS, Android
by FTP copies a complete file from one system to another
system. To use FTP we need an account to login to on the
server, or we need to use it with a server that allows
anonymous FTP.
The aim of the application is to provide Smartphone users
with a virtually infinite mass storage. This file manager
presents files located on remote servers as they were available
on a local directory. Users will hence be allowed to use the
Internet connectivity on their smart phone's to automatically
retrieve files and upload updates any time a user accesses
them [4] [5]. Clearly this happens at the cost of slower access
time.

I. INTRODUCTION For the same above, we can see in Fig. 1 a pyramidal

representation of a system memory [1]. On the top of the
The mobile revolution is under everybody's eyes. The
pyramid there are memory supports such as CPU registers
epidemic diffusion of Smartphone has moved the Web and all
that are notoriously fast but also very expensive and limited
sort of popular applications from our desks to our pockets. It
in byte capacity. Conversely, at the bottom layers we have
has also allowed the raise of new ubiquitously available,
larger and cheaper, but also slower, memory devices.
location-based applications, no longer being driven solely by
humans typing on keyboards but, increasingly, by sensors [1].
Smartphone still suffers from some limitations such as, for
instance, a limited memory for data storage, speed &
inconsistency. Via the FTP protocol, it is possible to establish
several connections through multiple servers simultaneously.
This will allows the user to upload - download - delete files
and create folders.
Fig 1: Memory device hierarchy
FTP is another commonly used application. It is the
Internet standard for file transfer. We must be careful to FTP4Android will utilize the last two layers depicted in
differentiate between file transfer, who is what FTP provides, Fig. 1: a local file system on the Smartphone memory and a
and file access, which is provided by applications such as remote file system distributed over servers in the Internet.

NFS (Sun's Network File System).The file transfer provided This layer will also use in Enhanced FTP4Android. It will

978-1-4673-5999-3/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE

extend the traditional memory hierarchy by including the
layer represented by data stored on remote servers which will
be characterized by the following properties.
Wide byte capacity- Nowadays, a plethora of remote
storage space is available on servers in the Internet.
Free byte cost- It is very easy to find the
aforementioned storage space for free.
Slow data access- The time to access data on remote
servers is even slower than that of common mass
storage as it includes also network transfer time.
Our main application is to provide Smartphone users with
the illusion of having an infinite memory on their devices by
storing their files on remote servers.
FTP4Android is software developed in Java for Google
Android platform [6]. The application has a list of FTP
servers and the user must have access to them. It establishes
connections to the servers in order to transfer the files.
For each available server, at least two connections will be
established by each Enhanced FTP4Android client: one is
reserved for the delete and create directory operations. This
reserved connection is useful to ensure that these operations
can be performed quickly. The rest of the connections
available will be use to upload and download files. For
managing and browsing the (local and remote) file system a
database will be use.
The main application of enhanced ftp4android is to
compress the data before sending, by using GP Zip algorithm.
Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving.
A zip file contains one or more files that have been
compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is. The zip file
format permits a number of compression algorithms. Hence
the size of a data reduces and maximum data will send. The
GP Zip algorithm is supported by java application & our
Enhanced FTP4Android will be developing in java.
II. LITERATURE SURVEY
Simple description of basic functionalities implemented
by FTP4Android can be provided with the help of Fig. 2. In
essence, files can be locally stored on the smart phone or they
can be remotely stored on servers in the Internet so as to
widen the memory capacity of the device. In the latter case,
these files are first divided into chunks which are then
sequentially uploaded on available servers. We divide files
into chunks for two different goals: i) system reliability by
having multiple copies of the same chunk on different servers
and ii) efficiency by parallel upload/download of different
chunks so as to increase the file retrieval speed.
FTP4Android only requires users to install it on their
smart phone' s (the current version is for Android operating
systems). The application is already configured to have the
file system root folder in a local folder that allows writing
files and folders. Moreover, it is also configured so as to
employ certain remote FTP servers; however, others may be
specified. General FTP servers can be used; the aim is that of
allowing users to utilize their account which are generally
provided for free by Internet providers. The only limitation is
that chosen FTP servers must allow at least two simultaneous
connections (which is generally, even if not always, true).
FTP Server.
Before starting to illustrate the application, it is
essential to understand some basic features of FTP servers. In
order to interact with a FTP server, our application must
know the following information:
• FTP address;
• Username and password;
•Maximum number of simultaneous connections permitted;
• Timeout.
Claudio E. Palazzi and Marco Ferrarese [1] suggested
that, the meaning of the first two points is trivial; it is critic to
clarify the third and the fourth ones. To avoid congestions
(and for economic reasons), many FTP servers do not allow
free users to transfer large amounts of data. Therefore,
besides the obvious limit of storage capacity on the server,
there may be other restrictions such as the maximum number
of simultaneous connections allowed for the same user.

Fig 2: FTP4Android general functioning
Moreover there may be a maximum time of inactivity
(timeout) beyond which the server does not accept anymore
FTP commands from the same user.
For its correct functioning, FTP4Android must be aware
of these parameters and act accordingly while interacting with
the chosen remote FTP servers.
K. Jegers, M. Wiberg,[3] suggested that, Operations
available in FTP4Android can obviously be performed
simultaneously, thanks to Java concurrency. These
operations, that can be performed both in remote and local
file system, include:
• make a directory
• upload a file
• download a file
• delete a file or a directory
Make a directory - In order to avoid an inconsistent remote
file system, the creation of a folder is made on all FTP servers
in the list of servers. In other words, this operation generates a
thread for each server which will create the directory at the
same path of the remote file system. Consequently, every FTP
server will have the same physical file system tree.
Upload a file - By uploading a file, its chunks are created.
Then, an upload thread is generated for each chunk; this
thread performs the upload of the chunk on the first available
connection to a server. The allocation of a chunk to a server is
non-deterministic: by repeating the upload of the same file,
the various chunks will probably not be assigned to the same
server. If the uploaded file already existed in the remote file
system then the old version is removed.
Download a file - Files are stored in chunks in the remote file
system. By downloading a file, the FTP4Android application
generates a download thread for each chunk and run them
concurrently. In addition, a barrier is utilized to wait until all
threads have completed the download of the respective
chunks.
Delete a file or a directory - Starting from the file/directory
selected by a user, the FTP4Android application retrieves all
the information related with it (e.g., number of chunks and
their location on remote servers). Then, for each FTP server, a
deleting thread is generated so as to erase the interested
chunks in it.
III. PROBLEM ANALYSIS
The FTP4Android suffers from the problem like Delays in
use of internet connectivity. Here, full bandwidth is not
utilized. It is not possible to fully exploit the whole bandwidth
available in uploading and downloading. Hence there is need
to improve the performance of FTP4Andorid by exploit the
whole bandwidth. The effect is to reduce the speed of
operation. So, the user has to wait until the response is
received.
There is no another way or alternative is given in
FTP4Android to improve the speed. Hence Enhanced
FTP4Android will provide another way to improve the speed
is compression of data. With the compression, the size of data
is reduced and therefore the same bandwidth will send
maximum data in same time period [12].
Another problem is related with the security. As we know
that the data is transfer over wireless network hence security
is the major part of the system. In our system, we propose the
Security implementation for Data Access. During the Data
Retrieval Session, Key is generated to the Legitimate User.
Only after Proper Authentication, files can be accessed by the
User [1].
If a user utilized a free server that later becomes no longer
available, the visualization of the file system may become
inconsistent. Developers are forced to take these limitations
into consideration.
IV. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY
The FTP4Android suffers from the problem like delays in
use of internet connectivity. Here, full bandwidth is not
utilized. Through the use of multiple active threads it is
possible to fully exploit the whole bandwidth available in
uploading and downloading. When the number of active
threads is greater than the total number of connections
available the transfer time tends to stabilize and there is no
advantage in increasing further number of active threads then
channel is fully utilized.
As shown in the figure3, enhance FTP4Android will
provide another way to improve the speed by compression of
data. With the compression the size of data is reduced and
therefore the same bandwidth will send maximum data in
same time period.
Over the past decade or two many techniques have been
developed for data compression, each of which has their own
particular advantages and disadvantages. One of the factors
that help in developing an efficient data compression model is
the availability of prior knowledge on the domain of the data
to be compressed. For these reasons, specialized compression
techniques can be used to compress data and send over
wireless network. An ideal compression system would be one
that is able to identify incompatible data fragments (both the
file level and within each file) in an archive, and to allocate
the best possible compression model for each, in such a way
to minimize the total size of the compressed version of the
archive.
M Server 3
0
B
I ( \
L
Packet Chunk 1 Chunk 2 ChunkN
Fig 3: Block Diagram of Enhance FTP4 function
To make some progress on turning this idea we will use a
general purpose compression method, to find optimal ways to
combine standard compression algorithms for maximally and
lossless compressing files and archives. The system divides
files into blocks of predefined length. It then uses a linear,
fixed-length representation where each primitive indicates
what compression algorithm to use for a specific data block.
GP-zip uses a form of "divide and conquer" strategy. Each
member of the function set performs well when it works in
the circumstances that it has been designed for. Dividing the
given data into smaller blocks makes the creation and
identification of such circumstances easier.
Package java.util.zip- Provides classes for reading and
writing the standard ZIP and GZIP file formats. It Provides
classes for reading and writing the standard ZIP and GZIP file
formats. Also includes classes for compressing and
decompressing data using the DEFLATE compression
algorithm, which is used by the ZIP and GZIP file formats.
Additionally, there are utility classes for computing the CRC-
32 and Adler-32 checksums of arbitrary input streams.
Furthermore in dividing files in chunks before forwarding
them to remote servers is that in this way a user can choose
different servers belonging to different providers and none of
them will have all the chunks to put together the original file.
In this way, users' contents will not be accessible by other
people thus providing some privacy protection.
 We will test the time required to upload, download, or [11] A. Karlson, G. Smith, B. Meyers, G. Robertson, M. Czerwinski,
"Courier: A Collaborative Phone-Based File Exchange System",
delete a file in the remote file system, when varying the Microsoft Research Technical Report MSRTR-2008-05, 2008.
[12] Ahmad Kattan Riccardo Poli "Evolutionary Lossless Compression with
number of active threads & varying the number of chunks GP-ZIP*", GECCO'08, July 12-16,2008, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, Jul
2008.
into which the file is divided.
[13] Android implementation code available on
http://seminarprojects.com/s/ftp4-android-implementation
v. CONCLUSION [14] Use of FTP4 to android application available on:
http://stackoverflow.com/question/I5163094/how-to-use-ftp4-j-to-
The epidemic diffusion of Smartphone has download-a-file-from-my-sever-in-android-app

profoundly changed our habits, moving the Web and all our
favorite applications from our pes and notebooks to our
handheld mobile devices. New ubiquitously available,
location-based applications are now becoming available
offering unprecedented potentialities for entertainment
applications.

We studied the benefits and limitations of the

FTP4Android for android Smartphone. The FTP4Android
system proposed in earlier was a good starting point.
However, it suffered from several limitations. In this paper
we have proposed a new system, Enhanced FTP4Android,
where such limitations will overcome and the data transfer
rate will be further improved through the use of GP Zip
compression technique.

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