There is no standard for the interpretation of URL's of the form "ftp://hostname". Let's say that the home directory for the anonymous user is /home/ftp . And there is a file in that directory called filename.txt . Under Netscape, that file might be referenced as ftp://hostname/filename.txt But under Microsoft's Internet Explorer, it is ftp://hostname/home/ftp/filename.txt To work around this problem, we create a directory /home/ftp/home . And in that directory, we create a symlink ftp that points back up to /home/ftp . Now we can reference the URL ftp://hostname/home/ftp/filename.txt Under Netscape, that will reference the file /home/ftp/filename.txt and Under Internet Explorer, that will reference the file /home/ftp/home/ftp/filename.txt Because we've setup that special symlink, both refer to the same file.