How the web works ? Part 1
Tags: webdev, beginners, tutorial, computerscience
Published: 2022-05-02 16:28:34

Yes, the web is complicated. But how it works is easiest to understand. In this short series we will explore how web works. 

## First things first, read about its component.

Ever heard about client-server model?
If no, you are good to go.

When you type www.google.com, there happens tons of magics back stage and you see page you were looking for.

Lets read what are the parts of web:

### 1. Client

Client is any system which send requests. People already familiar with client-server model can relate. But if you are newbie, you can consider any computer like yours as client. If you search, retrieve, download any kind of content from internet, your system is client. 

Every client computer has a unique address called an IP address that other computers can use to identify it.

### 2. Server

A machine that is connected to the internet and also has an IP address. A server waits for requests from other machines (e.g. a client) and responds to them. Unlike your computer (i.e. the client) which also has an IP address, the server has special server software installed and running which tells it how to respond to incoming requests from your browser. The primary function of a web server is to store, process and deliver web pages to clients. There are many types of servers, including web servers, database servers, file servers, application servers, and more. 

### 3. IP Address

IP stands for Internet protocol. Protocol means set of rules. IP address of your system reveals many information. Every computer on the internet has an IP address that it uses to identify and communicate with other computers. IP addresses have four sets of numbers separated by decimal points (e.g. 244.155.65.2). This is called the “logical address”. In order to locate a device in the network, the logical IP address is converted to a physical address by the TCP/IP protocol software. This physical address (i.e. MAC address) is built into your hardware.

### 4. ISP

ISP or Internet Service Provider. ISP is the middle man between the client and servers. Consider it as a place where we get IP adress for website name. ISP looks into DNS table for IP address.

### 5. DNS or Domain Name System

Used to identify one or more IP addresses. When you type the domain name into your browser, the DNS uses it to look up the corresponding IP address for that given website.

### 6. TCP/IP

TCP/IP is used as a standard for transmitting data over networks.

### 7. Port Number

A 16-bit integer that identifies a specific port on a server and is always associated with an IP address. It serves as a way to identify a specific process on a server that network requests could be forwarded to.

### 8. Host

A computer connected to a network — it can be a client, server or any other type of device. Each host has a unique IP address.
Servers are a type of host — they are a specific machine. On the other hand, a host could refer to an entire organization that provides a hosting service to maintain multiple web servers. You can run a server from a host in that sense.

### 9. HTTP

Hyper-text Transfer Protocol. The protocol that web browsers and web servers use to communicate with each other over the Internet.

### 10. URL

Uniform Resource Locators. URLs identify a particular web resource. A simple example is https://github.com/someone. The URL specifies the protocol (“https”), host name (github.com) and file name (someone’s profile page). A user can obtained the web resource identified by this URL via HTTP from a network host whose domain name is github.com.

Thanks for reading...

Reference - Freecodecamp