Real estate is all about location; Macs are all about convenience. It should come as no surprise, then, that you can connect to FTP servers from Terminal just as you can from the Finder or a Web browser. And with a little side help from Terminal's FTP program, which lets you download some very cool automation features, you can save oodles of time in the process.
When you use the ftp program to connect to servers, you must either include your user name and password in the command line or enter them when prompted by ftp. With help from a file named .netrc, however, you can make this process much simpler.