Web Basics, Web Server & its

Meaning, Web server Types

Singh Paramjit
The World Wide Web (WWW) basics
and fundamentals

The World Wide Web (also known as the Web,

WWW or W3) is a system of Internet servers through
which several Internet protocols can be accessed using
a single interface (your browser). Almost all protocols
available on the Internet are available on the Web.
This creates a convenient and user-friendly
environment through which email, FTP, Telnet,
Usenet News etc. can be accessed.
The World Wide Web's HTTP
Protocol

One of the most famous and popular protocols on the

web is the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
Hypertext documents contain links that connect to
other documents or files. The user can activate these
links or 'hot spots' (through a mouse button click, for
example) and the target document will then be
transferred on to the client machine and if it's a web
page, it would be displayed in the browser.
A single HyperText document can contain many such
hyperlinks. Because of all this "linking", a virtual web
of connections is created.
Web Pages are created with HTML

HTML files or web pages are plain text (ASCII) files with
a lot of tags. These tags are the building blocks of HTML.
The tags help in structuring a document and displaying
visual features such as font size, color, italics etc.
The tags are also used in creating hyperlinks and
embedding images, sounds, video and other multimedia
content.
HTML tags come in pairs (most of the times); there is a
starting and a closing tag. Tag names and tag attributes are
enclosed in < and > signs.
The Bold tag that displays text in bold.
The starting bold tag is <B> and the ending tag is </B>.
Web Browsers
Though the World Wide Web is a part of the Internet, it
serves as an important interface through which all of the net
can be accessed. This interface to the Internet is the browser.
The browser displays the HTML files using the instructions
in the tags. In addition, the browser can also display images
and video.
With the use of programming languages such as JavaScript,
VBScript, Perl, PHP, ASP, Java, the functionality of the web
is being increased.
The pages on the web can also be linked to databases to
provide dynamic content to the visitor. This feature attests
the active and energetic nature of the web.
Web – Basic Concepts

What is Internet?
The Internet is essentially a global network of
computing resources. You can think about the Internet
as a physical collection of routers and circuits as a set
of shared resources or even as an attitude about
interconnecting and intercommunication. Some
common definitions given in the past include:
A network of networks based on the TCP/IP
communications protocol.
A community of people who use and develop those
networks.
Internet Based services
Email: A fast, easy, and inexpensive way to
communicate with other Internet users around the world.
Telnet: Allows a user to log into a remote computer as
though it were a local system.
FTP: Allows a user to transfer virtually every kind of
file that can be stored on a computer from one Internet-
connected computer to another.
Usenetnews: A distributed bulletin board that offers a
combination news and discussion service on thousands
of topics.
World Wide Web (WWW): A hypertext interface to
Internet information resources.
What is HTTP?
This stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. This is the
protocol being used to transfer hypertext documents thats
makes the World World Wide possible.
A standard web address such as http://www.yahoo.com/ is
called a URL and here the prefix http indicates its protocol
What is URL?
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and is used to
specify addresses on the World Wide Web. A URL is the
fundamental network identification for any resource
connected to the web (e.g., hypertext pages, images, and
sound files).
URL
A URL will have the following format:
protocol://hostname/other_information
The protocol specifies how information from the link is
transferred. The protocol used for web resources is
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Other protocols
compatible with most web browsers include FTP, telnet.
The protocol is followed by a colon, two slashes, and
then the domain name. The domain name is the computer
on which the resource is located.
Links to particular files or subdirectories may be further
specified after the domain name. The directory names are
separated by single forward slashes.
What is Web Server?
Every Web site sits on a computer known as a Web
server. This server is always connected to the internet.
Every Web server that is connected to the Internet is
given a unique address made up of a series of four
numbers between 0 and 256 separated by periods.for
example, 68.178.157.132 ro 68.122.35.127.
When you register a Web address, also known as a
domain name, such as tutorialspoint.com you have to
specify the IP address of the Web server that will host
the site.
What is Web Browser?
Web Browsers are software installed on your PC. To
access the Web you need a web browsers, such as
Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer or
Mozilla Firefox.
On the Web, when you navigate through pages of
information this is commonly known as browsing or
surfing.
Web - Basics
What is SMTP Server?
This stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Server.
This server takes care of delivering emails from one server
to another server. When you send an email to an email
address, it is delivered to its recipient by a SMTP Server.
What is ISP?
This stands for Internet Service Provider. They are the
companies who provide you service in terms of internet
connection to connect to the internet.
You will buy space on a Web Server from any Internet
Service Provider. This space will be used to host your
Web site.
Web - Basics
What is DNS ?
DNS stands for Domain Name System. When
someone types in your domain name,
www.example.com, your browser will ask the Domain
Name System to find the IP that hosts your site. When
you register your domain name, your IP address
should be put in a DNS along with your domain name.
Without doing it your domain name will not be
functioning properly.
Web - Basics
What is W3C?
This stands for World Wide Web Consortium which
is an international consortium of companies involved
with the Internet and the Web.
The W3C was founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee,
the original architect of the World Wide Web. The
organization's purpose is to develop open standards so
that the Web evolves in a single direction rather than
being splintered among competing factions. The W3C
is the chief standards body for HTTP and HTML.
Web Server Types
Every Web site sits on a computer known as a Web
server.
There are four leading web browsers: Apache, IIS,
lighttpd and Jagsaw. Now we will see these servers in
bit more detail.
Apart from these Web Servers, there are other Web
Servers also available in the market but they are very
expansive. Major ones are Netscape's iPlanet, Bea's
Web Logic and IBM's Websphere.
Apache HTTP Server
This is the most popular web server in the world
developed by the Apache Software Foundation.
Apache web server is an open source software and can
be installed on almost all operating systems including
Linux, Unix, Windows, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and
more.
You can have Apache with tomcat module to have JSP
and J2EE related support.
IIS
The Internet Information Server (IIS) is a high
performance Web Server from Microsoft.
This web server runs on Windows NT/2000 and 2003
platforms ( and may be on upcoming new Windows
version also).
IIS comes bundled with Windows NT/2000 and 2003;
Because IIS is tightly integrated with the operating
system so it is relatively easy to administer it.
Lighttpd
The lighttpd, pronounced lighty is also a free web
server that is distributed with the FreeBSD operating
system.
This open source web server is fast, secure and
consumes much less CPU power.
Lighttpd can also run on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
and Solaris operating systems.
Sun Java System Web Server
This web server from Sun Microsystems is suited for
medium and large web sites.
Though the server is free it is not open source. It
however, runs on Windows, Linux and Unix
platforms.
The Sun Java System web server supports various
languages, scripts and technologies required for Web
2.0 such as JSP, Java Servlets, PHP, Perl, Python,
Ruby on Rails, ASP and Coldfusion etc.
Jigsaw Server
Jigsaw (W3C's Server) comes from the World Wide
Web Consortium.
It is open source and free and can run on various
platforms like Linux, Unix, Windows, Mac OS X Free
BSD etc. Jigsaw has been written in Java and can run
CGI scripts and PHP programs.
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