How does the Internet work?
Web Design August 30th, 2008
Introduction
Every so often, you get offered a behind-the-scenes look at the cogs and fan belts behind the action. Today’s your lucky day. I’m going to usher you behind the scenes of one of the hottest technologies that you might already be familiar with: the World Wide Web. Cue theme music.
This article covers the underlying technologies that power the World Wide Web:
- Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
- Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
- Domain Name System (DNS)
- Web servers and web browsers
- Static and dynamic content
It’s all pretty fundamental stuff—while most of what’s covered here won’t help you to build a better web site, it will give you the proper language to use when speaking with clients and with others about the web. It’s like a wise nun-turned-nanny once said in The Sound of Music: “When we read we begin with ABC. When we sing we begin with Do Re Mi.”. In this article I will briefly look at how computers actually communicate using HTTP and TCP/IP, then go on to look at the different languages that go together to create the web pages that make up the Internet.
Tags: asp.net, coldfusion, CSS, dynamic websites, php, static websites
