HTTP: meaning and definition simply explained

You probably use HTTP every day without knowing exactly what it means. We explain what "HTTP" stands for, what it does and what protocols it is related to.

That means HTTP

HTTP is so naturally part of the Internet that your Internet browser uses it automatically, even if you do not explicitly call it up. This is what HTTP is all about:

1. HTTP stands for "HyperText Transfer Protocol", a hypertext transfer protocol.
2. Web browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Firefox, use HTTP to display websites and send data to the website.
3. Browsers are the so-called clients, the web hosts with their websites are the servers and the transmitted data are called messages.
4. It uses TCP as the transport protocol, which segments the data and prevents data congestion.
5. In order to establish a connection to a server at all, the web address you have entered, for example "//www.chip.de", is transferred from a name server to the corresponding IP, in this case "216.146.46.11 ", converted.
6. The most common HTTP versions are HTTP / 1.0 and HTTP / 1.1. HTTP / 2 has also been used increasingly since 2015.
7. After the connection between server and client, your browser makes a request via HTTP and the server answers first with its header information and then with the message body. For example, this is the HTML file you want; the website you see in the browser.
8. In contrast to HTTP, data can be transmitted encrypted with HTTPS.
9. Large amounts of data are often uploaded to and downloaded from servers using FTP.