SCP stands for “Secure Copy.” Basically, it’s used to copy files between machines securely. SCP operates over the SSH protocol; therefore, files that are copied between hosts are transferred as securely as transmissions over SSH itself. Unix-based machines running as SSH servers support scp by default. Windows can support it as well.
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SSH stands for Secure SHell. From the earliest days of networking, users were given accounts referred to as “shell accounts.” Basically, a user could connect to a remote system via a program called telnet, which I’ve detailed on this site before. You can think of an email account as a type of shell account. You have an account on a remote system, and you use a program (in this case it actually is telnet most of the time) to connect to that system to do work. A true shell account would give you the command line interface to the system you are connecting to, in effect putting you at the console of that system. The purpose of this tutorial, however, isn’t to detail the merits of using shell accounts (that would be a tutorial series in itself), but to explain SSH.
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The one aspect of computers that has stuck with me since I first starting tinkering around with them is networking. I’ve been exposed to so many networking technologies that I can no longer name them all when asked. From hubs to routers; copper to fibre; clear text to encryption; I could go on and on and on. No matter the technology, though, there are a few indispensable tools that are crucial to testing and gathering information about the health of the network. I’m going to introduce a couple of the basics today.
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