One of the most common uses for shell accounts is to download files from a server to the shell via FTP (note that this is different from transferring files between your machine and the shell via FTP). To do this, you connect to your shell account via telnet or SSH, and use the shell's FTP client. This works similarly to downloading files to your computer, but instead the file downloads to your space on the shell, and you can later download the file from the shell to your computer if needed. A fast shell is capable of downloading files at a much faster rate than a typical dial-up connection.
To download a file, type ftp at the shell prompt. You will then be greeted with the ftp prompt. Below is a list of the basic commands you need to use at the ftp prompt to download a file to your shell (shown in the order one would typically use them).
open <server> - Connects to the specified FTP server. If the connection is successful, you'll be prompted to enter a login name and password (for most servers, type anonymous as login, and user@domain.com as your password).
ls - Lists the contents of the current directory on the FTP server.
cd <directory> - Changes to the specified directory on the FTP server. To switch to the directory above the current one, specify two periods as the directory, i.e. cd ...
bin - Switches to binary mode. You need to use this command before you download any files.
hash - Enables the display of hash marks while downloading a file. Useful for monitoring download progress.
prompt - Disables prompting between gets if getting multiple files using mget (below).
get <file> - Downloads the specified file to your shell.
mget <file1 file2 fileN> - Downloads all specified files, one after the other. This command supports wildcards, e.g. mget egg* will download all files in the current directory on the FTP server with names starting with 'egg'.
close - Disconnects from the FTP server.
quit - Quits you from the ftp program.
As a final note, make sure you don't give out your shell password to anyone!
Giving others access to your shell is asking for trouble. If you really want to
give someone else access to your shell, make sure it's someone you trust and
have known for a while, although doing even this may be against the shell
provider's policy.