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Web Servers

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Web Servers

1. What is HTTP?

HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol, an Internet protocol that enables the distribution of hypertext documents. Like other TCP/IP services, such as FTP, NNTP and SMTP, HTTP is a client/server protocol.

The terms HTTP server and web server are roughly interchangeable (though modern server products bundle far more functionality than HTTP prescribes, for example server-side scripting and a native application programming interface [API]). The terms HTTP client and web browser are roughly interchangeable (although modern browser products bundle far more functionality than HTTP prescribes, for example client-side scripting and a Java Virtual Machine).

HTTP's evolution is motivated by concern over its viability as the dominant Internet protocol and future pipeline for distributed object computing. Towards this end, the W3C [World Wide Web Committee] and IETF [Internet Engineering Task Force] are collaborating on HTTP/1.1. This upgrade addresses performance issues, state management (cookies), transparent content negotiation, universal time conventions, and PEP, a dynamic extension mechanism for HTTP -- all lacking in v1.0.

References: RFC 1945 defines HTTP/1.0; RFC 2068 defines HTTP/1.1.