Types of Protocols HTTP and FTP
Most people who have used the Internet for a while will recognize the acronym HTTP, even if they don't know what it means. Anyone who's ever downloaded a file has probably used FTP, although they may not have realized it. Together these two protocols are the basis for most of the activity that occurs on the web today.
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Definitions
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HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) are network protocols, i.e. rules that describe how computer programs will cooperate. HTTP describes how interlinked documents will be communicated between a host computer (sender) and the client computer (receiver), while FTP describes the interactions for transferring files between a host and a client. Both HTTP and FTP adhere to the client-server model of network computing, which defines service providers as servers and service requesters as clients
Background
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The theoretical origins of HTTP and its defining entity the link, go back to at least 1945 when Vannevar Bush published an essay in the Atlantic Monthly titled "As We May Think" in which he proposed a machine called a Memex in which electronic documents contained "associative trails". In the 1960s, Ted Nelson coined term 'Hypertext' which he defined as non-linear writing.
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Development
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By the 1980s, TCP/IP, the internet's network backbone had been consolidated and the FTP specification defined how file transfers worked. You could transfer files -- if you happened to know where they were located. Researchers began working on document search and retrieval systems. In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee, an English physicist working at CERN successfully connected an HTTP client to his server. Using HTTP, anyone in the world could connect to his computer and retrieve (text) documents which might contain links to other documents on other servers. Thus the World Wide Web was born.
How They Work
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An interaction begins with the server 'listening' for clients' requests. The servers fulfill those requests by sending back the requested document or file. The protocols define actions that can take place to begin and complete the requests and verbs to name those actions. For example, a 'GET' request from a client is paired with a resource name (think document or file) and if found, is sent back by the server, along with the status message 'OK'.
Today
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With the basics in place, the Internet developed at an astonishing pace, in terms of its adoption by users and growth in sites. It also evolved into a rich platform for content. Browsers began providing better interfaces and content types expanded to graphics, animation, sound and video. From its humble beginnings as a way for physicists to share papers, the web powered by HTTP and FTP has grown into a near universal communication pathway.
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