Web Essentials: Clients, Servers,

and Communication
Reference from: Web Technologies Textbook
By JEFFREY C. JACKSON

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 World Wide Web
• Originally, one of several systems for
organizing Internet-based information
– Competitors: WAIS, Gopher, ARCHIE
• Distinctive feature of Web: support for
hypertext (text containing links)
– Communication via Hypertext Transport
Protocol (HTTP)
– Document representation using Hypertext
Markup Language (HTML)

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 World Wide Web
• The Web is the collection of machines
(Web servers) on the Internet that provide
information, particularly HTML documents,
via HTTP.
• Machines that access information on the
Web are known as Web clients. A Web
browser is software used by an end user
to access the Web.

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Hypertext Transport Protocol
(HTTP)
• HTTP is based on the request-response
communication model:
– Client sends a request
– Server sends a response
• HTTP is a stateless protocol:
– The protocol does not require the server to
remember anything about the client between
requests.

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 HTTP
• Normally implemented over a TCP connection
(80 is standard port number for HTTP)
• Typical browser-server interaction:
– User enters Web address in browser
– Browser uses DNS to locate IP address
– Browser opens TCP connection to server
– Browser sends HTTP request over connection
– Server sends HTTP response to browser over
connection
– Browser displays body of response in the client area
of the browser window

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 HTTP
• The information transmitted using HTTP is
often entirely text
• Can use the Internet’s Telnet protocol to
simulate browser request and view server
response

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 HTTP

Connect { $ telnet www.example.org 80

Trying 192.0.34.166...
Connected to www.example.com
(192.0.34.166).
Escape character is ’^]’.

{
Send GET / HTTP/1.1
Request Host: www.example.org

{
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Receive
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2003 20:30:49 GMT
Response
…

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 HTTP Request
• Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)
– Syntax: scheme : scheme-depend-part
• Ex: In http://www.example.com/
the scheme is http
– Request-URI is the portion of the requested
URI that follows the host name (which is
supplied by the required Host header field)
• Ex: / is Request-URI portion of
http://www.example.com/

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 URI
• URI’s are of two types:
– Uniform Resource Name (URN)
• Can be used to identify resources with unique
names, such as books (which have unique ISBN’s)
• Scheme is urn
– Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
• Specifies location at which a resource can be
found
• In addition to http, some other URL schemes are
https, ftp, mailto, and file

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Client Caching
• A cache is a local copy of information
obtained from some other source
• Most web browsers use cache to store
requested resources so that subsequent
requests to the same resource will not
necessarily require an HTTP
request/response
– Ex: icon appearing multiple times in a Web
page

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Client Caching
• Cache advantages
– (Much) faster than HTTP request/response
– Less network traffic
– Less load on server
• Cache disadvantage
– Cached copy of resource may be invalid
(inconsistent with remote version)

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Web Clients
• Many possible web clients:
– Text-only “browser” (lynx)
– Mobile phones
– Robots (software-only clients, e.g., search
engine “crawlers”)
– etc.

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Web Browsers
• First graphical browser running on
general-purpose platforms: Mosaic (1993)

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Web Browsers
• Primary tasks:
– Convert web addresses (URL’s) to HTTP
requests
– Communicate with web servers via HTTP
– Render (appropriately display) documents
returned by a server

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 HTTP URL’s
http://www.example.org:56789/a/b/c.txt?t=win&s=chess#para5

host (FQDN) port path query fragment

authority Request-URI

• Browser uses authority to connect via TCP

• Request-URI included in start line (/ used
for path if none supplied)
• Fragment identifier not sent to server
(used to scroll browser client area)

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Web Browsers
• Standard features
– Save web page to disk
– Find string in page
– Fill forms automatically (passwords, CC numbers, …)
– Set preferences (language, character set, cache and
HTTP parameters)
– Modify display style (e.g., increase font sizes)
– Display raw HTML and HTTP header info (e.g., Last-
Modified)
– Choose browser themes (skins)
– View history of web addresses visited
– Bookmark favorite pages for easy return

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Web Browsers
• Additional functionality:
– Execution of scripts (e.g., drop-down menus)
– Event handling (e.g., mouse clicks)
– GUI for controls (e.g., buttons)
– Secure communication with servers
– Display of non-HTML documents (e.g., PDF)
via plug-ins

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Web Servers
• Basic functionality:
– Receive HTTP request via TCP
– Map Host header to specific virtual host (one of many
host names sharing an IP address)
– Map Request-URI to specific resource associated
with the virtual host
• File: Return file in HTTP response
• Program: Run program and return output in HTTP response
– Map type of resource to appropriate MIME type and
use to set Content-Type header in HTTP response
– Log information about the request and response

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Web Servers
• httpd: UIUC, primary Web server c. 1995
• Apache: “A patchy” version of httpd, now the
most popular server (esp. on Linux platforms)
• IIS: Microsoft Internet Information Server
• Tomcat:
– Java-based
– Provides container (Catalina) for running Java
servlets (HTML-generating programs) as back-end to
Apache or IIS
– Can run stand-alone using Coyote HTTP front-end

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Web Servers
• Some Coyote communication parameters:
– Allowed/blocked IP addresses
– Max. simultaneous active TCP connections
– Max. queued TCP connection requests
– “Keep-alive” time for inactive TCP
connections
• Modify parameters to tune server
performance

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Web Servers
• Some Catalina container parameters:
– Virtual host names and associated ports
– Logging preferences
– Mapping from Request-URI’s to server
resources
– Password protection of resources
– Use of server-side caching

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Tomcat Web Server
• HTML-based server administration
• Browse to
http://localhost:8080
and click on Server Administration link
– localhost is a special host name that
means “this machine”

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Secure Servers
• Since HTTP messages typically travel
over a public network, private information
(such as credit card numbers) should be
encrypted to prevent eavesdropping
• https URL scheme tells browser to use
encryption
• Common encryption standards:
– Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
– Transport Layer Security (TLS)

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0
 Secure Servers
I’d like to talk securely to you (over port 443)

HTTP Here’s my certificate and encryption data HTTP

Requests Requests

Here’s an encrypted HTTP request

TLS/ Here’s an encrypted HTTP response TLS/ Web

Browser
SSL SSL Server

Here’s an encrypted HTTP request

HTTP HTTP
Responses Here’s an encrypted HTTP response Responses

Jackson, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective, © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-185603-0