Anyone know how to rsync or ssh to an ftp site? (Follow on to Tar Oddity)

[DB]

Evening All,

After many trials & tribulations, I've finally got my laptop running F12 
- got caught by the "yumex kernel upgrade" problem - still can't get ark 
to read consistently from my external disc -even after running cpu test 
for 2 days & memtest for 80 hours without error & getting a clean bill 
of health from palimpsest for the HDD, -  so tried rsync & ssh & finally 
followed enough "how to"s to copy my /home from F11 to F12.  Thanks to 
all for the many ideas of how to fix it!

Now.... seeing how brilliant rsync is at updating my /home on the 2 
machines, I thought it'd be a Good Idea to try and use it to keep a 
website I look after, up to date.  Problem is - how do I specify the 
"receiver" address, when I only have an ftp access to the distant system 
(& I guess my chances of installing rsync on a provider's system is 
about as good as......)  All the notes I read on the 'net seem to work 
with ip addresses, which I don't know how to find for my target...

As ever, enormous thanks for any pointers & pushes in a "good" direction!

Dave