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santhosh
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Computers & Technology
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8:28 PM on September 29, 2008
Sudipta Deb's Answer
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a communications protocol for the transfer of information on the Internet. Its use for retrieving inter-linked text documents (hypertext) led to the establishment of the World Wide Web.
HTTP development was coordinated by the World Wide Web Consortium and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), culminating in the publication of a series of Request for Comments (RFCs), most notably RFC 2616 (June 1999), which defines HTTP/1.1, the version of HTTP in common use.
HTTP is a request/response standard between a client and a server. A client is the end-user, the server is the web site. The client making a HTTP request - using a web browser, spider, or other end-user tool - is referred to as the user agent. The responding server - which stores or creates resources such as HTML files and images - is called the origin server. In between the user agent and origin server may be several intermediaries, such as proxies, gateways, and tunnels. HTTP is not constrained to using TCP/IP and its supporting layers, although this is its most popular application on the Internet. Indeed HTTP can be "implemented on top of any other protocol on the Internet, or on other networks. HTTP only presumes a reliable transport; any protocol that provides such guarantees can be used."
Typically, an HTTP client initiates a request. It establishes a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection to a particular port on a host (port 80 by default; see List of TCP and UDP port numbers). An HTTP server listening on that port waits for the client to send a request message. Upon receiving the request, the server sends back a status line, such as "HTTP/1.1 200 OK", and a message of its own, the body of which is perhaps the requested file, an error message, or some other information.
The reason that HTTP uses TCP and not UDP is because much data must be sent for a webpage, and TCP provides transmission control, presents the data in order, and provides error correction. See the difference between TCP and UDP.
Resources to be accessed by HTTP are identified using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) (or, more specifically, Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)) using the http: or https URI schemes.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer or HTTPS is a URI scheme used to indicate a secure HTTP connection. It is syntactically identical to the http:// scheme normally used for accessing resources using HTTP. Using an https: URL indicates that HTTP is to be used, but with a different default TCP port (443) and an additional encryption/authentication layer between the HTTP and TCP. This system was designed by Netscape Communications Corporation to provide authentication and encrypted communication and is widely used on the World Wide Web for security-sensitive communication such as payment transactions and corporate information systems.
source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /Http
http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Http
Answered at
10:00 PM on September 29, 2008
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