IT3401 WEB ESSENTIALS

UNIT 1
INTRODUCTION TO INTERNET
The Internet is the Global system of interconnected computer networks that use the internet
protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link devices worldwide.
Internet is accessible to every user all over the world. For example, a DNS server will resolve a
name [Link] IP address to uniquely identify the computer on
which this website is hosted. A special computer DNS (Domain Name Server) is used to give
name to the IP Address so that user can locate a computer by a name. IP Address is a unique set
of numbers (such as [Link]) which identifies a computer location. Every computer in
internet is identified by a unique IP address. Internet uses the standard Internet Protocol
(TCP/IP). Internet is a world-wide global system of interconnected computer networks.

BASIC WEB CONCEPTS

INTERNET SERVERS:
Several computers on the internet offer services to other computers on the Internet. These types
of computers are usually called as server and the software that provides these services are called
server software. The computer that uses server service is called as the client. There are several
types of servers. They are:
Mail Servers
[Link] manages outgoing emails and incoming mails.
2. protocol attached with this are:
a POP3 (Post office Protocol),
b. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)
c. Mail Clients like outlook express is used to access the mail server.
Web Servers:
It stores all the web applications and transmits them in response to request. Client is called as the
browser. The following web servers are,
1. IIS-Windows platform
2 PWS-Windows platform
3. Tomcat-Linux
4 Apache, etc.
FTP Servers:
It stores all types of files. FTP clients are used to transfer the files between the client and server.
Cute FTP FTP client.
After websites are developed in the local system, it has to be uploaded to the web server where
the web application is being hosted.
News Servers:
It is used to publish the news. It stores Usenet newsgroup articles that can be read and send. A
news client is used to read the news.
DNS Servers
DNS servers are used to translate between the numeric IP addresses thai identity each host
computer on the Internet and their corresponding domain names.
E.g. [Link] Domain nаmе
DNS server translates domain name to IP address of yahoo wab server 204,71.200.69
WORLD WIDE WEB

WWW is a type of service in the internet. Internet is the backbone of communication systems
whereas www is a type of service that uses communication [Link] is created in 1989 by
the Tim Berners lee a physicist at the European laboratory for particle physics (CERN) in
Geneva, Switzerland to enable the document communication between the physics researchers
and to create a network between them, physics researchers created hypertext documents as their
documentation standards. In 1993, Mare Anderson and some students at the University of Illinois
developed the world's first graphical web browser called MOSAIC. In 1994, Marc Anderson
established Netscape Communication Corporation (Netscape) with James Clark of Silicon
Graphics to further develop the web browser. The World Wide Web is a sophisticated system for
universal information capture and delivery.
The World Wide Web consortium (W3C) definition of the web: "The World Wide Web is the
universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge"
Provides information access in ways not previously possible
 Hyperlinked (Hypertext)
 Graphical user interface
 Pictorial and non-text information
 Information that changes rapidly
 Immediate access
 Anyone can author a well site
 Easily searchable information
The functionality of the WWW is based on 3 main standards)
 URL (Universal Resource Locator)
 HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
 HTTP (Hypertest transfer Protocol)
Web Language: HTML: Standard language for information publication.

Elements of WWW

[Link] and Server:

A web server us a computer that is connected to the Internet that has software capable of storing,
retrieving and distributing some of the web application files. A web client (web browser) is a
computer that requests file, from the web. When a client is requesting for a file is the web the
network directs the request to the web server where the file has been available Web server by
accepting requests sends the file to the client.
2. Web Languages and Protocols:
The web server and client may be running different Operating System, software and hardware so
that a well defined set of languages and protocols are required that are independent of the
hardware or operating system on which they run.
Web Languages: HTML, DHTML, XML, CSS, ASP, etc.
Web Protocols: HTTP, FTP, TCP, UDP, IP, ARP, RARP, etc.
3. Web Pages:
A Webpage is a HTML document that is stored in a web server and that has an URL so that it
can be accessed via the web.
Website: [Link]
Webpage: [Link]/[Link]
4. Home Page:
A Home page is the front door of the web site. Sometimes homepage may not be visible to the
user. It can be configured in the web browser.
5. Web Browser:
A web browser is a software tool that computers use to communicate with web servers on the
Internet.
 It enables to download and display the web pages that user requests.
 A web browser should be capable of understanding HTML and display text.
 It supports pictures, video, sound and even 3d images.
 In the address bar of the browser, type of URL. and it will display the web pages.
 Browsers: IE-Outlook Express
 Netscape Navigator - display java Applets
 Opera, Konqueror and Mosaic others
6. Web Sites:
A web site is a collection of WebPages belonging to particular person or organization
Example:
a) Portal:
It is a website that provides numerous free services that enhance the web experience. It has all
services like email, chat, news greeting, address hook etc.
Eg Yahoo, excite, rediff, etc.
b) Web Guides (WG):
A Web Guide is a website with a system of categories and subcategories that organizes links to
the web pages,
c) Search Engines (SE):
Search Engines are websites to find out any specific information. Here the users can give a list of
keywords or phrases (query) to the search engines and it will return a list of web pages that
contain those phrase or words.
Eg: [Link]
[Link]
[Link]
Search engine maintains a database that contains information about all the web sites. Search
engines include those websites in their database by two ways.
1. Web Crawler/Software agent:
It traverses the web automatically collecting index data by 2 principles.
 Depth first: follows link relevant to topic
 Breadth first follows entire network of links regardless of content.
2. Registration:
The web developers can register their websites detail in the search engine.
EVOLUTION OF INTERNET
The concept of Internet was originated in 1969 and has undergone several technological
Infrastructural changes as discussed below:
 ARPANET was developed by United States Department of Defense. The ARPANET
project was intended to research on computer networking.
 The origin of Internet devised from the concept of Advanced Research Project Agency
Network (ARPANET).
 In 1972, the ARPANET spread over the globe with 23 nodes located. at Initially, there
were only four nodes, formally called Hosts. Email was available on ARPANET in
1972. TCP/IP was designed to be used for host-to-host communication both within local
area networks.
 Basic purpose of ARPANET was to provide communication among the various bodies of
government. By the time, with invention of new technologies such as TCP/IP protocols,
DNS, WWW, browsers, scripting languages etc., Internet provided a medium to publish
and access information over the web. different countries and thus became known as
Internet.
 ARPANET switched from using an earlier protocol to TCP/IP during 1982, This form of
connection was asynchronous.
 By 1983, when many ARPANET nodes were split off to form a separate network called
MILNET, there were only 113 nodes in the entire network, and these were primarily at
universities and other organizations involved in DoD-sponsored research.

 In 1985, the NSF began work on a new network based on TCP/IP, called NSFNET. One
of the primary goals of this network was to connect the NSF's new regional
supercomputing centers. The NSFNET would provide a backbone through which other
networks could interconnect synchronously.
 In 1995 private telecommunication firms are paid by other firms, such as some of the
larger Internet service providers (ISI's), who connect directly with the Internet backbone.
These ISPs, in turn, are paid by their users, which may include smaller ISPs as well as
end users.

BASIC INTERNET PROTOCOLS

A Protocol is nothing but set of rules. They are agreed formats for transmitting data between
devices. The protocol allows different devices and systems to communicate with each other.

File Transfer Protocol

A file transfer protocol (FTP) is a network protocol that allows users to transfer files between a
local computer and a remote server. FTP is used over TCP/IP networks, such as the internet. It
uses two connections between client and server, one is for actual data transfer and another is for
control information.

Using separate connections for data transfer makes the protocol works efficient and control
information shows how much data is sent and how much data is remaining while data transfer.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. It is an TCP/IP based communication protocol
which is used to deliver virtually all files and other data, collectively called resources, on the
World Wide Web. These resources could be HTML files, image files, query results, or anything
else.
A browser is works as an HTTP client because it sends requests to an HTTP server which is
called Web server. The Web Server then sends responses back to the client. The standard and
default port for HTTP servers to listen on is 80 but it can be changed to any other port like 8080
etc.
There are three important things about HTTP of which you should be aware:
●HTTP is connectionless: After a request is made, the client disconnects from the server and
waits for a response. The server must re-establish the connection after it process the request.
●HTTP is media independent: Any type of data can be sent by HTTP as long as both the client
and server know how to handle the data content. How content is handled is determined by the
MIME specification

HTTP Message: HTTP message is the information transaction between the client and server.
Two types of HTTP Message:
1. Requests
a. Client to server
2. Responses
a. Server to client
Fields
· Request line or Response line ·
General header
· Request header or Response header
· Entity header
· Entity body

Request Message
Request Line:
• A request line has three parts, separated by spaces
o a method name
o the local path of the requested resource
o the version of HTTP being used
• A typical request line is: o GET /path/to/file/[Link] HTTP/1.1

Response Message:
Response Line:
• A request line has three parts, separated by spaces
o the HTTP version,
o a response status code that gives the result of the request, and
o an English reason phrase describing the status code
• Typical status lines are: o HTTP/1.0 200 OK or o HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found

HTTP Methods:
• HTTP method is supplied in the request line and specifies the operation that the client has
requested. Some common methods
• Options
• Get
• Head
• Post
• Put
• Move
• Delete
Two methods that are mostly used are the GET and POST:
o GET for queries that can be safely repeated
o POST for operations that may have side effects (e.g. ordering a book from an on-line store).
 The GET Method
• It is used to retrieve information from a specified URI and is assumed to be a safe, repeatable
operation by browsers, caches and other HTTP aware components
• Operations have no side effects and GET requests can be re-issued. • For example, displaying
the balance of a bank account has no effect on the account and can be safely repeated
The Post Method
• Used for operations that have side effects and cannot be safely repeated
 The POST request message has a content body that is normally used to send parameters
and data
• The IIS server returns two status codes in its response for a POST request
o The first is 100 Continue to indicate that it has successfully received the POST request
o The second is 200 OK after the request has been processed.
HTTP response status codes
• Informational (1xx)
• Successful (2xx)
• Redirection (3xx)
o 301: moved permanently
• Client error (4xx)
o 403 : forbidden
o 404: Not found
• Server error (5xx)
o 503: Service unavailable
o 505: HTTP version not supported

Simple Network Management Protocol

SNMP is a network protocol which enables network admin to manage network devices and to
diagnose network problems. It has 2 main elements in it called Supervisor and agent.
 Supervisor is at the terminal(network admin) required for management.
 Agent program are found at the level of each interface connecting to managing devices to
network.

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It is a communication protocol used for sending
and receiving email messages over the Internet. Mail servers and other message transfer agents
(MTAs) use SMTP to send, receive and relay mail messages. it provides a standardized method
for email delivery, thus enabling email clients and mail servers to exchange data.

POST OFFICE PROTOCOL

Post Office Protocol (POP) is a standard protocol that allows email clients to retrieve emails
from a mail server. POP is used by many Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
How POP works
1. POP contacts the email service
2. POP downloads all new messages to the user's device
3. POP deletes the downloaded messages from the email service
POP versions
 POP1: The first version of POP was introduced in 1984
 POP2: Released in 1985, POP2 was a revision of the original POP specification
 POP3: The current version in use today, released in 1988
POP features
 POP is an application-layer Internet standard protocol
 POP uses an Internet Protocol (IP) to provide access to a mailbox on a mail server
 POP frees up mailbox space on the server
 POP allows users to read messages when they are offline
Limitations of POP
 Messages can only be accessed using the same computer
 It can be difficult to export mails if users switch email programs or computer systems

TCP/IP
 Transmission Control Protocol is a higher level protocol that extends IP to provide
additional functionality includes reliable communication based on the concept of
connection.
A connection is established between TCP software running on two machines by one of the
machines (let's call it A) sending a connection-request message vin IP to the other (B).
IP message contains a message conforming to the TCP protocol and representing a TCP
connection request. Then connection will be established. Both A and B can both send messages
at the same time; this is known as full duplex communication. Once a connection has been
established, TCP provides reliable data transmission by demanding an acknowledgment for each
packet it sends via IP. Another important feature that TCP adds to IP is the concept of a port.
The port concept allows TCP to be used to communicate with many different applications on a
machine.

For example, a mail server conforming with SMTP will typically ask TCP to listen for requests
to port 25. If at a later time an IP message is received by the machine running the mail server
application and that IP message contains a TCP message with port 25 indicated in its header,
then the data contained within the TCP message will be returned to the mail server application.
Such an IP message could be generated by a mail client calling on TCP software on another
system, as illustrated on the right side of the figure. Though the connection between port
numbers and applications is managed individually by every machine on the Internet. certain
broadly useful applications (such as e-mail over SMTP) have had port numbers assigned to them
by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) [IANA-PORTS]. These port numbers, in
the range 0-1023, can usually be requested only by applications that are run by the system at
boot-up or that are run by a user with administrative permissions on the system.

 Internet Protocol is a network layer protocol contains addressing information. Internet

Protocol-is fundamental to the definition of the Internet. A key element of IP is the IP
address, which is simply a 32-bit number. IP addresses are normally written as a
sequence of four decimal numbers separated by periods (called "dots"), as in
[Link]. Each decimal number represents one byte of the IP address. The function
of IP software is to transfer data from one computer (the source) to another computer (the
destination).
  The IP software running on the source creates a packet, which is a sequence of bits
representing the data to be transferred along with the source and destination IP addresses
and some other header information, such as the length of the data IP software on that
computer will receive the packet and pass its data up to an application that is waiting for
the data.
IP Address Format
Each host computer has unique Number called IP address format in which values range from 0 to
255 each one is called octet.

Advantages
Safe delivery of Data
Error detection
Assurance of correct sequencing data being received
It is a connection oriented protocol

UDP
UDP is a connection less protocol without any error detection facility. UDP (User Datagram
Protocol) is an alternative protocol to TCP that also builds on IP. It is an unreliable protocol as it
does not provide the two-way connection of guaranteed delivery of data. This advantage over
TCP is speed for simple tasks. And it is also called as light weight communication protocol.