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The Basics of HTTP
- As Hethmon notes in "An Illustrated Guide to HTTP, "the web
is the largest client/server system implemented to date." It is also
the most complex and heterogeneous one that must deal with multitudes
of operating systems, human languages, programming languages, software,
hardware, and middleware.
- What is a client/server system?
- A client/server system is a very keen way of distributing
information across information systems like a local area network (LAN),
a wide area network (WAN), or the Internet.
- A client/server system works something like this: A big hunk of
computer (called a server) sits in some office somewhere with a bunch
of files that people might want access to. This computer runs a
software package (uh...also called a server unfortunately) that listens
all day long to requests over the wires.
| The "wires" is possibly a twisted pair network
hooked into a local telephone company POP or a cable or fiber optics
network hooked up to a corporate WAN or LAN that is also linked up to
the national telecommunications/information infrastructure through a
local telephone company. Whatever the case, the specifics of the
information infrastructure is beyond the scope of this tutorial, but
should be mentioned. |
- Typically, these requests will be in some language and some format
tha the computer understands, but in English sound something like,
"hello software package running on a big hunk of computer, please give
me the file called "mydocument.txt" that is located in the directory
"/usr/people/myname".
- The "server software" will then access the server hardware, find
the requested file, send it back over the wires to the "client" who
requested it, and then wait for another request from the same or
another client.
- Usually, the "client" is actually a software program, like Netscape
Navigator, that is being operated by a person who is the one who
really wants to see the file. The client software however, deals with
all the underlying client/server protocol stuff and then displays the
document (that usually means interpreting HTML, but we'll get there in
just a bit) to the human user.
- The whole process looks something like the figure below:
- So if the web is a huge client/server system, what is the underlying
client/server protocol that is used by the client software and the
server software for communication?
- Well the client/server protocol used by the web is HTTP (HyperText
Transport Protocol).
- HTTP is a protocol that is defined in several RFC´s (Request for
Comments) located at the Internic and has had several generations worth
of revisions (HTTP/09, HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1).
- HTTP is a "request-response" type protocol that specifies that a
client will open a connection to a server then send a request using a
very specific format. The server will then respond and close the
connection.
- The details of HTTP are less important for an HTML designer as they
are to a web programmer, so we will not go into the specifics here
(although they are available from the Illustrated Guide to HTTP
referenced in the Resources section below). The main thing you need to
know is that HTTP is a language spoken between your web browser (client
software) and a web server (server software) so that they can
communicate with each other and exchange files.
- As a web designer, you will deal much more with the other web
protocol, HTML that is discussed next.
HTTP Resources
Nuts and Bolts of the Web
Introduction to Web Design | Table of Contents
HTML the Language of the Web
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