Services and Devices

Services

Services (or protocols) are actually what many people are referring to when they mention the Internet. Some common protocols are, FTP, SMTP, TELNET and HTTP.

The service we are primarily interested in when talking about web sites is HTTP or Hypertext Transfer Protocol.

The World Wide Web is actually based on the HTTP protocol. This protocol is the structure that allows web site developers around the world to successfully develop web sites that can communicate with all other sites.

A hypertext document is basically any document that is connected to, or links to another document. HTML or Hyper Text Mark-up Language is the most common coding language used to create hypertext documents for the Web.

By putting these three items together we have the basic essentials for creating a web site.

Devices

Keeping in mind that software based services cannot function on their own,it is critical to address the ominous server / browser relationship.

The web server (many times, incorrectly referred to as "The Server") is responsible for serving up or offering web sites for people to view.

The reason addressing the "Web Server" as just "the server" is incorrect is that a server is a physical computer that has been specifically built to allow multiple software-based servers to function or "run" simultaneously and to handle a large number of parallel processing requests by users.

Software servers handle their own specific tasks and perform the required computations as needed to fulfill external user requests.

Simply put, one hardware based server can be running software servers for FTP, Email, and HTTP all at the same time and simultaneously accommodate all requests.