Info Tech Guide

HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the protocol used to transfer data over the World Wide Web. That's why all Web site addresses begin with "http://". Whenever you type a URL into your browser and hit Enter, your computer sends an HTTP request to the appropriate Web server.

The Web server, which is designed to handle HTTP requests, then sends to you the requested HTML page.HTTP is the set of rules for transferring files (text, graphic images, sound, video, and other multimedia files) on the World Wide Web. As soon as a Web user opens their Web browser, the user is indirectly making use of HTTP. HTTP is an application protocol that runs on top of the TCP/IP suite of protocols.

The term HyperText was coined by Ted Nelson who in turn was inspired by Vannevar Bush's microfilm-based "memex". Tim Berners-Lee first proposed the "World Wide Web" project now known as the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee and his team are credited with inventing the original HTTP protocol along with the HTML and the associated technology for a web server and a text-based web browser.

The first version of the protocol had only one method, namely GET, which would request a page from a server. The response from the server was always an HTML page

HTTP is called a stateless protocol because each command is executed independently, without any knowledge of the commands that came before it. This is the main reason that it is difficult to implement Web sites that react intelligently to user input. This shortcoming of HTTP is being addressed in a number of new technologies, including ActiveX, Java, JavaScript and cookies.

HTTP concepts include (as the Hypertext part of the name implies) the idea that files can contain references to other files whose selection will elicit additional transfer requests.

Any Web server machine contains, in addition to the Web page files it can serve, an HTTP daemon, a program that is designed to wait for HTTP requests and handle them when they arrive. Your Web browser is an HTTP client, sending requests to server machines. When the browser user enters file requests by either "opening" a Web file (typing in a Uniform Resource Locator or URL) or clicking on a hypertext link, the browser builds an HTTP request and sends it to the Internet Protocol address (IP address) indicated by the URL.

The standards development of HTTP has been coordinated by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium, culminating in the publication of a series of Requests for Comments (RFCs), most notably RFC 2616 (June 1999), which defines HTTP/1.1, the version of HTTP in common use.