CSI 3140

WWW Structures, Techniques and Standards

Web Essentials: Clients, Servers, and

Communication
 1. The Internet
Technical origin: ARPANET (late 1960’s)
 One of earliest attempts to network heterogeneous,
geographically dispersed computers.
 Email first available on ARPANET(Advanced
Research Projects Agency Network) in 1972 (and
quickly very popular!)
ARPANET access was limited to select DoD
(Department of Defense) - funded organizations.

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 The Internet

Open-access networks
 Regional university networks (e.g., SURAnet- Southeastern
Universities Research Association Network )
 CSNET for CS departments not on ARPANET
 NSFNET ( National Science Foundation Network)
(1985-1995)
 Primary purpose: connect supercomputer centers
 Secondary purpose: provide backbone to connect regional
networks

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 The Internet

The 6 supercomputer centers connected by the early NSFNET backbone

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 The Internet

Original NSFNET backbone speed: 56 kbit/s

Upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s (T1 line) in 1988
Upgraded to 45 Mbit/s (T3 line) in 1991

In 1988, networks in Canada and France

connected to NSFNET.
In 1990, ARPANET is decommissioned,
NSFNET the center of the internet.

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 The Internet

Internet: the network of networks

connected via the public backbone and
communicating using TCP/IP communication
protocol.
 Backbone initially supplied by NSFNET,
privately funded (ISP fees) beginning in 1995.

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 Internet Protocols

 Communication protocol: how computers talk

 Cf. telephone “protocol”: how you answer and end
call, what language you speak, etc.
 Internet protocols developed as part of
ARPANET research
 ARPANET began using TCP/IP in 1982
 Designed for use both within local area
networks (LAN’s) and between networks.

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 Internet Protocol (IP)

IP is the fundamental protocol defining the

Internet (as the name implies!)
IP address:

32-bit number (in IPv4)
 Associated with at most one device at a time
(although device may have more than one)

Written as four dot-separated bytes, e.g.
192.0.34.166
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 IP

IP function: transfer data from source device to

destination device
IP source software creates a packet representing the
data

Header: source and destination IP addresses, length of
data, etc.

Data itself
If destination is on another LAN, packet is sent to a
gateway that connects to more than one network.
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 IP

Source

Network 1

Gateway
Destination

Gateway

Network 2 Network 3

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 IP

Source

LAN 1

Gateway
Destination

Gateway

Internet Backbone LAN 2

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 Transmission Control Protocol
(TCP)
 Limitations of IP:
 No guarantee of packet delivery (packets can be
dropped)
 Communication is one-way (source to destination)
 TCP adds concept of a connection on top of
IP
 Provides guarantee that packets delivered.
 Provide two-way (full duplex) communication

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 TCP
Establish
connection.
{ Can I talk to you?

OK. Can I talk to you?

OK.

{
Here’s a packet.
Send packet
Source Destination
with Got it.
acknowledgment.

Here’s a packet.

{
Resend packet if
no (or delayed) Here’s a resent packet.
acknowledgment.
Got it.

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 TCP

 TCP also adds concept of a port

 TCP header contains port number representing an
application program on the destination computer.
 Some port numbers have standard meanings
 Example: port 25 is normally used for email transmitted
using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
 Other port numbers are available first-come-first
served to any application

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TCP

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 User Datagram Protocol (UDP)

Like TCP in that:

 Builds on IP
 Provides port concept
Unlike TCP in that:
 No connection concept
 No transmission guarantee
Advantage of UDP vs. TCP:
 Lightweight, so faster for one-time messages

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 Domain Name Service (DNS)
DNS is the “phone book” for the Internet
 Map between host names and IP addresses
 DNS often uses UDP for communication
Host names
 Labels separated by dots, e.g., www.example.org
 Final label is top-level domain
 Generic:.com, .org, etc.
 Country-code: .us, .il, etc.

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 DNS
 Domains are divided into second-level domains,
which can be further divided into subdomains, etc.
 E.g., in www.example.com, example is a
second-level domain
 A host name plus domain name information is
called the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of
the computer
 Above, www is the host name, www.example.com
is the FQDN

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 DNS

 nslookup (DNS client)program provides

command-line access to DNS (on most systems)
 looking up a host name given an IP address is
known as a reverse lookup

Recall that single host may have multiple IP
addresses.

Address returned is the canonical IP address
specified in the DNS system.

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 DNS

ipconfig (on windows) can be used to

find the IP address (addresses) of your
machine
ipconfig /displaydns displays the
contents of the DNS Resolver Cache
(ipconfig /flushdns to flush it)

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 Analogy to Telephone Network

IP ~ the telephone network

TCP ~ calling someone who answers,
having a conversation, and hanging up
UDP ~ calling someone and leaving a
message
DNS ~ directory assistance

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 Higher-level Protocols

 Many protocols build on TCP


Telephone analogy: TCP specifies how we initiate
and terminate the phone call, but some other protocol
specifies how we carry on the actual conversation.
 Some examples:

SMTP (email) (25)

FTP (file transfer) (21)

HTTP (transfer of Web documents) (80)

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 2. World Wide Web
 Originally, one of several systems for
organizing Internet-based information.
 Competitors: WAIS(Wide Area Information Server),
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)

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 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.
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 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.
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 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.

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 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.

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 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
…

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 3. HTTP Request

Structure of the request:

 start line
 header field(s)
 blank line
 optional body

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 HTTP Request

Structure of the request:

 start line
 header field(s)
 blank line
 optional body

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 HTTP Request

Start line
 Example: GET / HTTP/1.1
Three space-separated parts:
 HTTP request method
 Request-URI (Uniform Resource Identifier)
 HTTP version

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 HTTP Request

Start line
 Example: GET / HTTP/1.1
Three space-separated parts:
 HTTP request method
 Request-URI
 HTTP version
 We will cover 1.1, in which version part of start line
must be exactly as shown
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 HTTP Request

Start line
 Example: GET / HTTP/1.1
Three space-separated parts:
 HTTP request method
 Request-URI
 HTTP version

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 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/

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 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.

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 HTTP Request

Start line
 Example: GET / HTTP/1.1
Three space-separated parts:
 HTTP request method
 Request-URI
 HTTP version

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 HTTP Request

 Common request methods:

 GET
 Used if link is clicked or address typed in browser
 No body in request with GET method
 POST
 Used when submit button is clicked on a form.
 Form information contained in body of request.
 HEAD
 Requests that only header fields (no body) be returned in
the response.

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 HTTP Request

Structure of the request:

 start line
 header field(s)
 blank line
 optional body

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 HTTP Request
 Header field structure:
 field name : field value
 Syntax
 Field name is not case sensitive.
 Field value may continue on multiple lines by starting
continuation lines with white space
 Field values may contain MIME (Multipurpose Internet
Mail Extensions) types, quality values, and wildcard
characters (*’s)

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 Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME)
Convention for specifying content type of a
message.
 In HTTP, typically used to specify content type
of the body of the response
MIME content type syntax:
 top-level type / subtype
Examples: text/html, image/jpeg

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 HTTP Quality Values and
Wildcards
Example header field with quality values:
accept:
text/xml,text/html;q=0.9,
text/plain;q=0.8, image/jpeg,
image/gif;q=0.2,*/*;q=0.1
 Quality value applies to all preceding items.
 Higher the value, higher the preference.
 Note use of wildcards to specify quality 0.1 for
any MIME type not specified earlier.

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 HTTP Request

 Common header fields:

 Host: host name from URL (required)
 User-Agent: type of browser sending request
 Accept: MIME types of acceptable documents
 Connection: value close tells server to close connection
after single request/response.
 Content-Type: MIME type of (POST) body, normally
application/x-www-form-urlencoded.
 Content-Length: bytes in body
 Referer: URL of document containing link that supplied URI
for this HTTP request.

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 4. HTTP Response

Structure of the response:

 status line
 header field(s)
 blank line
 optional body

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 HTTP Response

Structure of the response:

 status line
 header field(s)
 blank line
 optional body

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 HTTP Response

Status line
 Example: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Three space-separated parts:
 HTTP version
 status code – (200)
 reason phrase (intended for human use)

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 HTTP Response

Status code
 Three-digit number
 First digit is class of the status code:
 1=Informational
 2=Success

 3=Redirection (alternate URL is supplied)

 4=Client Error

 5=Server Error

 Other two digits provide additional information


See http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html

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 HTTP Response

Structure of the response:

 status line
 header field(s)
 blank line
 optional body

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 HTTP Response

 Common header fields:

 Connection, Content-Type, Content-Length
 Date: date and time at which response was generated
(required)
 Location: alternate URI if status is redirection
 Last-Modified: date and time the requested resource was last
modified on the server
 Expires: date and time after which the client’s copy of the
resource will be out-of-date
 ETag: a unique identifier for this version of the requested
resource (changes if resource changes)

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 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

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Client Client Caching Server

1. HTTP request for image

2. HTTP response containing image

Browser Web
Server

3. Store image

Cache

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Client Client Caching Server

Browser Web
Server
I need that
image
again…

Cache

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Client Client Caching Server

This…

HTTP request for image

Browser Web
HTTP response containing image Server
I need that
image
again…

Cache

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 Client Client Caching Server

Browser Web
Server
I need that
image
again…

Get … or this
image

Cache

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 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)

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 Client Caching

Validating cached resource:

 Send HTTP HEAD request and check Last-
Modified or ETag header in response.
 Compare current date/time with Expires header
sent in response containing resource.
 If no Expires header was sent, use heuristic
algorithm to estimate value for Expires.
 Ex: Expires = 0.01 * (Date – Last-Modified) + Date

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 Character Sets

 Every document is represented by a string of integer

values (code points)
 The mapping from code points to characters is defined
by a character set.
 Some header fields have character set values:
 Accept-Charset: request header listing character sets that the
client can recognize.
 Ex: accept-charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.5
 Content-Type: can include character set used to represent the
body of the HTTP message
 Ex: Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

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 Character Sets

 Technically, many “character sets” are actually

character encodings.

An encoding represents code points using variable-length
byte strings.

Most common examples are Unicode-based encodings
UTF-8 and UTF-16.
 IANA(Internet Assigned Numbers Authority)
maintains complete list of Internet-recognized
character sets/encodings.
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 Character Sets
 Typical US PC produces ASCII documents.
 US-ASCII character set can be used for such
documents, but is not recommended.
 UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1 are supersets of US-ASCII and
provide international compatibility.
 UTF-8 can represent all ASCII characters using a single byte
each and arbitrary Unicode characters using up to 4 bytes each.
 ISO-8859-1 is 1-byte code that has many characters common
in Western European languages, such as é.

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 5. Web Clients

Many possible web clients:

 Text-only “browser” (lynx)
 Mobile phones
 Robots (software-only clients, e.g., search engine
“crawlers”)
 etc.
We will focus on traditional web browsers.

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 Web Browsers
 First graphical browser running on general-
purpose platforms: Mosaic (1993)

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Web Browsers

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 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.

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 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)
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 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

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 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.

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 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

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 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

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 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

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 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

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 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”

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Tomcat Web Server

71
Tomcat Web Server

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Tomcat Web Server

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 Tomcat Web Server

Some Connector fields:

 Port Number: port “owned” by this connector
 Max Threads: max connections processed
simultaneously
 Connection Timeout: keep-alive time

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Tomcat Web Server

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 Tomcat Web Server

Each Host is a virtual host (can have

multiple per Connector)
Some fields:
 Host: localhost or a fully qualified domain name
 Application Base: directory (may be path relative
to JWSDP installation directory) containing
resources associated with this Host

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Tomcat Web Server

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 Tomcat Web Server

Context provides mapping from Request-URI path

to a web application
Document Base field is directory (possibly relative
to Application Base) that contains resources for this
web application
For this example, browsing to
http://localhost:8080/
returns resource from
c:\jwsdp-1.3\webapps\ROOT
 Returns index.html (standard welcome file)

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 Tomcat Web Server

Access log records HTTP requests

Parameters set using AccessLogValve
Default location: logs/access_log.* under
JWSDP installation directory
Example “common” log format entry (one line):
www.example.org - admin
[20/Jul/2005:08:03:22 -0500]
"GET /admin/frameset.jsp HTTP/1.1"
200 920

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 Tomcat Web Server

Other logs provided by default in JWSDP:

 Message log messages sent to log service by web
applications or Tomcat itself
 logs/jwsdp_log.*: default message log
 logs/localhost_admin_log.*: message log for

web apps within /admin context

 System.out and System.err output (exception
traces often found here):
 logs/launcher.server.log

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 Tomcat Web Server

Access control:

Password protection (e.g., admin pages)
 Users
and roles defined in
conf/tomcat-users.xml

Deny access to machines
 Useful for denying access to certain users by denying access
from the machines they use
 List of denied machines maintained in RemoteHostValve

(deny by host name) or RemoteAddressValve (deny by IP

address)

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 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)

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 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

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 Secure Servers
Man-in-the-Middle Attack
Fake Fake
DNS www.example.org
Server 100.1.1.1
What’s IP
address for 100.1.1.1 My credit card number is…
www.example.org?

Real
Browser www.example.org

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 Secure Servers
Preventing Man-in-the-Middle
Fake Fake
DNS www.example.org
Server 100.1.1.1
What’s IP
address for 100.1.1.1 Send me a certificate of identity
www.example.org?

Real
Browser www.example.org

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