How does the Web work?

The web is all around us nowadays, from ordering food to booking a cab and many more. Life is unimaginable without web in today’s world. With its variety of applications in various fields, it plays a crucial role in the development of the world. The web is responsible to make people connect with each other irrespective of how far they are. In this article, we will take an overview of how the web works (We will take the reference of websites only).

               The web can be thought of as a spider web, but in this context, the web is the network of all the computers connected across the globe. There are various websites on this web, that’s why the name goes “Web-Site”. To access these websites, we have to have a web browser. Through this web browser, we can use browse through all these websites.

               Websites are mainly developed using languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The CSS and JavaScript code is within an HTML file. HTML refers to Hyper-Text Markup Language. So, the web-browsers are interpreters that can interpret an HTML file and open the website for us.

               But, where are these codes of each website present? The developers of each website place their code into a web server. Web servers are nothing but computers that serves the user by providing information according to the need or the input. There is each server for every website and each server has its own IP address (which can be thought of as an address we use daily).

               Think of this scenario, we use Google’s website on a daily basis. Google has its web server. We open the browser and search “www.google.com”. Now, our browser contacts the web server of Google to request the code of the google page. The web server sends the response and sends the HTML file (Hyper-Text file) and the page gets loaded on the browser. If the server sends the HTML file in the unencrypted form it is called HTTP (Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol), whereas if the HTML file is sent in the encrypted form it is HTTPS (Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol Secure). The only difference is, you guessed it right, the security.

               The point to be noted is that the browser doesn’t contact the server by its name (like “www.google.com” ), but with the IP address of each server. For Example, Google’s web page has the IP address 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4. So, the browser contacts the server with this address but not the name. But, the thing is we don’t remember the IP addresses of each and every website and we search the website just by its name, then how does the browser know the IP Address of the website by the name of the website? To extract the IP address from the name of the website, the browser's DNS server (Domain Name system).

               While using the websites, the browser is in continuous connection with the respected web server. This is how the web works!!

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