HTTPAbstractHistoryHow it WorksThe HTTP RequestHeadersResponse LineThe Response BodyCookiesConclusionHTTPBy Dee Chow, Mychal Hess, and Riley BarnesReferencesHTTPAbstractThis report details the history, processes, and implications of the HypertextTransfer Protocol also known as HTTP. It begins with a brief overview of the inventor and an explanation of the necessity of the protocol. We will then delve deeper into the inner workings of the protocol and further explain the two major components: the request and response. The report will end with an overview of “cookies,” which is a method for information swapping made necessary by the statelessness of the protocol and the inevitable boom of e-business.HistoryThe Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) was invented by Time Berners-Lee in 1990 at the European Center for High Energy Physics in Geneva, Switzerland. HTTP stands at the very core of the World Wide Web. According to the HTTP 1.0 specification, HTTP is an application-level protocol with the lightness and speed necessary for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. It is a generic and stateless protocol that can be used for many tasks. 1The innovations that Berners-Lee added to the Internet creating the World Wide Web, had two dimensions: connectivity and interface. HTTP and HTML areclosely linked; one defines connectivity, the other defines interface. HTTP is the transport or transfer protocol offering the base method by which all clients. HTTP defines how information is transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers take in response to commands you send over the Internet. HTTP also gives computers on the Internet a way to exchange meta-information on data types as they exchange hypermedia documents. HTTP operates on a request/response paradigm where clients and servers "speak" to each other on an already established TCP/IP connection. (TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol and is the primary network protocol used on the Internet; HTTP works only on top of an Internet connection established through the use of TCP/IP.) He invented a new protocol for the computers to speak as they exchangedhypermedia documents. This HTTP made it very easy for any computer on the Internet to safely offer its collection of documents to the greater whole. The simplicity of HTTP has been a major factor in its rapid adoption, but also has become its main drawback; the next generation of HTTP, dubbed "HTTP-NG", will be a replacement for HTTP 1.0 with much higher performance and adding some extra features needed for use in commercial applications. It is designed to make it easy to implement the basic functionality needed by all browsers, makingthe addition of more powerful features such as security and authentication much simpler. 2`The current HTTP 1.0 often causes performance problems on the server side, and on the network, since it sets up a new connection for every request. HTTP-NG "divides up the connection [between client and server] into lots of different channels ... `The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the protocol (set of rules) that governs the "under-the-hood" aspects of the World Wide Web. HTTP is a "client-server" protocol designed to facilitate communication of "hypertext" (interlinked documents) across multiple platforms "Client-server" means it is a model in which client programs e.g. "Web browsers," are used to interact with a central Web server program that serves up documents and other files such as sound or graphics files upon request. How it WorksThe HTTP Request Like most network protocols, HTTP uses the client-server model: An HTTPclient opens a connection and sends a request message to an HTTP server; the server then returns a response message, usually containing the resource that was requested. After delivering the response, the server closes the connection making HTTP a stateless protocol, i.e. not maintaining any connection information between transactions. An HTTP request consists of three stages. The first stage is called the request line. This involves contacting a web server with a certain method of 3request and sending some preliminary information. The second stage is the header information stage. This involves information about the program the client is using to access the web page. The third and optional part of the request is thebody of the request, which contains the main part of what the client is actually requesting from the web server, with the exception of a get request, where the body is always empty.HeadersAgain the request line has three parts, separated by spaces: a method name, the path of the requested resource, and the version of HTTP being used. “GET” is the most common HTTP method; it says "give me this resource". This is what you do when you are accessing a web page and ask for a certain page that contains particular the information you want.The second component of both requests and responses is called the header information. This asks for information about the information contained in a file hosted on the web server. This is used when you want to know how recent a file is or who wrote the information contained in a file. It also lets you know information about the server itself. The third method of request is called the post method. This allows data or information to be sent from the client to the web server, instead of only allowing the web server to send information back to the client.4Headers provide information about the client or server, or about the object sent in the message body. The headers are in the usual text header format, which is: one line per header, of the form "Header-Name: value". The header name is not case-sensitive (though the value may be). Any number of spaces or tabs may be between the ":" and the value. HTTP 1.0 defines 16 headers, though none are required. HTTP 1.1 defines 46 headers, and one (Host:) is required in requests. The User-Agent: header identifies the program that's making the request, in the form "Program-name/x.xx", where x.xx is the (mostly) alphanumeric version of the program. For example, Netscape 3.0 sends the header "User-agent: Mozilla/3.0Gold".The second part of the request line stage is the resource locator (URL). The URL consists of the protocol, followed by the name of the server, followed bythe name of the file, followed by additional parameter information. In its entirety, the URL looks like your typical web
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