"We have investigated your difficulties connecting to your Web site via FTP
from your Apple based system. We have found numerous postings on this topic on the Web and in newsgroups, and have confirmed this to be a problem. This is a design change in Service Pack 6a to the Windows NT Operating System.
We have reported this problem to Microsoft, and spoken to their engineers.
A case has been opened with the following number:
SRX991228602825
and the problem seems to stem from the tcpip.sys file updated with SP 6a.
Though it is our interpretation that there will likely be little action taken on this problem in the near future, Microsoft has promised to keep us updated. This move, whether intentional or simply an honest error, further isolates Apple users and possibly others using non NT and Windows operating systems.
Microsoft currently offers no solution to this problem. While a patch to the software may never come, fortunately Burlee has developed several solutions:
1) We will move your site to one of our UNIX (RedHat Linux) machines
free of charge. This problem will disappear for you at this point, but you
should recognize that this is a different operating system, to which there
are some important ramifications (such as the loss of ASP support -
Microsoft does not support ASP on the UNIX/Linux platform). If you would
like to switch to UNIX, please find additional information and the order
form pasted below.
2) Obtain a PC under the Windows operating system, in which case you
would not have the problem.
3) Switch to the FrontPage design tool. As it uses HTTP to upload instead of FTP, you should not experience difficulties. If you are currently using FrontPage on your MAC and you are experiencing these difficulties, please contact us with the specific details of how you are using the program to publish.
4) Accept that you can no longer have interactive FTP access to your site, and wait to see if a fix arrives from Microsoft. The reports we have received from MAC users is that the performance of FTP clients is spotty, meaning that while sometimes simple commands, such as ls, are not executed, there are also instances in which the client will be successful. If you go to the following site, you may also choose other MAC FTP clients, such as "transmit," which might work better.
http://www.tucows.com/
Obviously, #2 and #4 are not positive solutions for everyone, and we would strongly recommend #1. If a Windows based PC is readily available, we would recommend using that if it makes no difference to you. If it does, we will gladly move you to a UNIX/Linux machine free of charge (see below). While this is no fault of Burlee, we do regret the inconvenience to you, and are disappointed in the performance of Microsoft on this issue. Any host running NT with Service pack 6 will present the same difficulties to Mac users. We have proposed the best solutions available to us at this time, and hope that one of these, while not ideal, will work for you.
)...they are both on exactly the same connection - 512k ADSL thru Linux Router