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Http

HTTP is the foundational protocol for data communication on the World Wide Web, facilitating the request and response cycle between web browsers and servers. It is stateless, media-independent, and relies on TCP for reliable data delivery, with a structured message format including start lines, headers, and optional bodies. The protocol has evolved through versions HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, and HTTP/3, each introducing improvements in performance and functionality.

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16 views2 pages

Http

HTTP is the foundational protocol for data communication on the World Wide Web, facilitating the request and response cycle between web browsers and servers. It is stateless, media-independent, and relies on TCP for reliable data delivery, with a structured message format including start lines, headers, and optional bodies. The protocol has evolved through versions HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, and HTTP/3, each introducing improvements in performance and functionality.

Uploaded by

Surendranath Koujageri
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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You're asking about the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

Here's a breakdown of what it is


and its key aspects:
What is HTTP?
HTTP is the foundation of data communication on the World Wide Web. It's an
application-layer protocol that defines how messages are formatted and transmitted between
web browsers (clients) and web servers. When you type a website address (URL) into your
browser, HTTP is the protocol that your browser uses to request and receive the content of that
website from the server.
Think of it as the language that web browsers and web servers use to talk to each other.
Key Characteristics of HTTP:
●​ Request-Response Model: HTTP operates on a request-response cycle. A client (e.g.,
your web browser) sends a request message to a server, and the server sends back a
response message containing the requested resource (e.g., HTML page, image, video).
●​ Stateless: HTTP is inherently stateless. This means that each request from a client to a
server is treated as an independent transaction. The server doesn't retain any information
about previous requests from the same client. This simplifies server design but can make
it challenging to implement features like user sessions and shopping carts. Mechanisms
like cookies and sessions are built on top of HTTP to address this statelessness.
●​ Media Independent: HTTP can transmit various types of data, as long as both the client
and server understand the data format. This includes HTML documents, images, audio
files, video files, and more. The type of data being transmitted is indicated by headers in
the HTTP messages.
●​ Connection-Oriented (Historically): Traditionally, HTTP used a separate TCP
connection for each request/response pair.
●​ Connectionless (Conceptually): Due to the stateless nature, each request-response is
treated independently, giving the appearance of being connectionless at the application
level.
●​ Uses TCP: HTTP typically relies on the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) at the
transport layer. TCP provides a reliable and ordered delivery of data, which is crucial for
web content.
●​ URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) Based: HTTP uses URIs (like URLs) to identify and
locate resources on the web.
HTTP Message Structure:
HTTP messages (both requests and responses) have a similar structure:
1.​ Start Line:
○​ Request: Specifies the HTTP method (e.g., GET, POST), the requested URI, and
the HTTP version. Example: GET /index.html HTTP/1.1
○​ Response: Indicates the HTTP version, a status code (e.g., 200 OK, 404 Not
Found), and a reason phrase. Example: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
2.​ Headers: Provide additional information about the request or response. Headers are
key-value pairs separated by a colon. Examples:
○​ Host: www.example.com
○​ User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64)
○​ Content-Type: text/html
○​ Content-Length: 1234
3.​ Body (Optional): Contains the actual data being transmitted. For requests, this might
include form data (for POST requests). For responses, this contains the requested
resource (e.g., the HTML content of a web page). The body is separated from the
headers by a blank line.
Common HTTP Methods (Requests):
●​ GET: Retrieves data from the server identified by the URI.
●​ POST: Sends data to the server to create or update a resource.
●​ PUT: Replaces an existing resource at the specified URI with the data in the request body.
●​ DELETE: Deletes the resource at the specified URI.
●​ HEAD: Similar to GET, but only retrieves the headers, not the body. Useful for checking if
a resource exists or for getting metadata.
●​ OPTIONS: Asks the server about the HTTP methods and other options supported by the
resource.
Common HTTP Status Codes (Responses):
Status codes indicate the outcome of the client's request. They are grouped into five classes:
●​ 1xx (Informational): The request was received and is being processed.
●​ 2xx (Success): The request was successfully received, understood, and accepted. (e.g.,
200 OK)
●​ 3xx (Redirection): Further action needs to be taken by the client to fulfill the request.
(e.g., 301 Moved Permanently, 302 Found)
●​ 4xx (Client Error): The request contains bad syntax or cannot be fulfilled. (e.g., 400 Bad
Request, 404 Not Found)
●​ 5xx (Server Error): The server failed to fulfill a valid request. (e.g., 500 Internal Server
Error)
HTTP/1.1 vs. HTTP/2 vs. HTTP/3:
●​ HTTP/1.1: The most widely adopted version for a long time. It introduced persistent
connections (allowing multiple requests/responses over a single TCP connection) and
other improvements over the original HTTP/1.0. However, it still suffered from issues like
head-of-line blocking.
●​ HTTP/2: Introduced binary framing, header compression (using HPACK), and multiplexing
(allowing multiple requests and responses to be interleaved over a single TCP
connection), significantly improving performance.
●​ HTTP/3: The latest major version, which replaces TCP with QUIC (Quick UDP Internet
Connections), a transport protocol built on top of UDP. QUIC aims to improve
performance further by reducing connection establishment time, eliminating head-of-line
blocking at the TCP level, and providing better handling of network changes.
In essence, HTTP is the fundamental protocol that enables us to access and interact with the
vast amount of information and services available on the World Wide Web. Its simplicity and
extensibility have allowed it to evolve and adapt to the ever-changing needs of the internet.

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