HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) is a well established Internet protocol designed to transfer content (e.g. HTML files and images) across networks. HTTP is defined in numerous RFCs (e.g. RFC 2616), which can be obtained from the Internet Engineering Task Force.
HTTP is a request-response protocol. A client such as a Web browser sends an HTTP request to an HTTP server, which
is hosting content such as HTML files and images. The server sends a response message to the client, which will
generally include the content the client requested if it is available. The content (or resources) hosted by the HTTP server is identified by Uniform Resource Locators, or
URLS, using the http or https notation.
The original version of HTTP (HTTP/1.0) used a separate TCP connection to the server for every request-response.
This meant that HTML pages with images required a connection for the page as well as for each image.
This was not easily scalable, and HTTP/1.1 can reuse connections multiple times.
See also:
· HTTPS