HTTP - HTTPS

HTTP

"Hyper Text Transfer Protocol"
The primary technology protocol on the web that allows linking and browsing. This is the technology used to communicate between web servers and web users. This protocol is the foundation for large, multi-functioning, multi-input systems — like the World Wide Web. The web as we know it would not function without this bedrock of communication processes, as links rely on HTTP in order to work properly

HTTPS

"Hyper Text Transfer Protocol with Secure Sockets Layer"
Another primary protocol primarily developed with (SSL) secure, safe Internet transactions in mind. SSL is a secure encryption Web protocol used to make data safe when transmitted over the internet. SSL is especially utilized on shopping sites to keep financial data secure but is also used on any site that requires sensitive data (such as a password). Web searchers will know that SSL is being utilized on a website when they see https in the URL of a web page

HTTP

Provides a network protocol standard that web browsers and servers use to communicate. It's easy to recognize this when visiting a website because it's written right in the URL
(e.g. http://www.rshweb.com)
This protocol is similar to others like FTP in that it's used by a client program to request files from a remote server. In the case of HTTP, it's usually a web browser that requests HTML files from a web server, which are then displayed in the browser with text, images, hyper-links, etc

HTTP

What is also called a stateless system. What this means is that unlike other file transfer protocols such as FTP, the HTTP connection is dropped once the request has been made. So, once your web browser sends the request and the server responds with the page, the connection is closed

Since most web browsers default to HTTP, you can type just the domain name and have the browser auto-fill the 'http://' portion

History of HTTP

Tim Berners-Lee created the initial HTTP in the early 1990s as part of his work in defining the original World Wide Web. Three primary versions were widely deployed during the 1990s:
HTTP 0.9 (for support of basic hypertext documents)
HTTP 1.0 (extensions to support rich websites and scalability)
HTTP 1.1 (developed to address performance limitations of HTTP 1.0, specified in Internet RFC 2068)

The latest version, HTTP 2.0, became an approved standard in 2015. It maintains backward compatibility with HTTP 1.1 but offers additional performance enhancements

While standard HTTP does not encrypt traffic sent over a network, the HTTPS standard was developed to add encryption to HTTP via the use of (originally) Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or (later) Transport Layer Security (TLS)

How HTTP Works

HTTP is an application layer protocol built on top of TCP that uses a client-server communication model. HTTP clients and servers communicate via HTTP request and response messages. The three main HTTP message types are GET, POST, and HEAD
HTTP GET messages sent to a server contain only a URL. Zero or more optional data parameters may be appended to the end of the URL. The server processes the optional data portion of the URL, if present, and returns the result (a web page or element of a web page) to the browser
HTTP POST messages place any optional data parameters in the body of the request message rather than adding them to the end of the URL
HTTP HEAD request works the same as GET requests. Instead of replying with the full contents of the URL, the server sends back only the header information (contained inside the HTML section)

The browser initiates communication with an HTTP server by initiating a TCP connection to the server. Web browsing sessions use server port 80 by default although other ports such as 8080 are sometimes used instead. Once a session is established, the user triggers the sending and receiving of HTTP messages by visiting the web page

Issues With HTTP

Messages transmitted over HTTP can fail to be delivered successfully for several reasons including:
User error
Malfunction of the web browser or web server
Errors in the creation of web pages
Temporary network glitches

When these failures occur, the protocol captures the cause of the failure (if possible) and reports an error code back to the browser called an HTTP status line/code. Errors begin with a certain number to indicate what kind of error it is most numbers by 4xx errors, which indicate that the request for the page can not be completed properly or that the request contains incorrect syntax. As an example, 404 errors means that the page can not be found. Some websites even have some fun with custom 404 error pages

With all RSH Web Hosting packages we include SSL certificates for Free, and this will also change your URL or Domain Name over to HTTPS automatically

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