Transfer Modes in FTP

ASCII is used by the rest of the world (stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange)

• Use if you want to purposely translate your data to ASCII - for example when the target system is a PC or a UNIX machine
  

EBCDIC is used nearly exclusively in IBM machines (stands for Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code)

• Use if you want to purposely maintain EBCDIC Coding - for example when the target system is an IBM 390 or IBM i

BINARY

• Use if you want to preserve the original content of the file and ensure NO translation takes place in the transfer of data. For example when transferring a *SAVF or a graphic image.