Just need a little direction here

Admittedly, I have never used an FTP program in my life. All I want to use it for is to transfer large files from my computer to my friends' computers and have them be able to do the same. AIM has file transfer capability, but the transfer cap is unacceptably low. I can't seem to connect to my friend's computer through its IP or host name. If I should even be using SmartFTP for what I'm trying to do, what should I do to get where I'm going and if not, what would you suggest?

Thanks.

This requires quite some work with FTP. At least one of you needs to be running an FTP server (SmarFTP is just a client). And at least one of you needs to do proper port forwarding through his router. For FTP newbies this might be just to much work to set up. Thus I'd suggest you rather try to find out why AIM file transfer is slow for you (probably because it is getting relayed due to missing port forwarding). Please see some AIM help site for more info.