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Network Page (Preferences Dialog)

The Network page on the Preferences dialog allows you to configure global network preferences.

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External IP address

To use active mode with FTP protocol, WinSCP needs to know an IP address, via which the server can reach your machine. If you have a direct connection to the network, WinSCP can ask operating system for the IP address.

But if you are behind NAT router, it would return only the local network address. Then you need to check Use following external IP address and fill your external IP address in the box below. You can find your external IP address using many online services, like whatsmyip.net or Google.

Connections

Use When SFTP connection is rejected, knock FTP port to make WinSCP automatically try to detect, if server supports FTP protocol1, when SFTP connection fails. This is to help novice users, who do not realize that WinSCP defaults to SFTP (contrary to most other file transfer clients).

Further Reading

Read more about Preferences dialog and its other pages.

  1. For detection, WinSCP tries to open port 21 (immeditelly closing it, if succeeds) on the remote host. WinSCP does not send any data to the host. Back

Last modified: by martin