HTTP

Main method of communication at the Application Layer for the web. A state-transfer protocol. Sometimes called the second waist of the Internet (after IP Address)

See also: Braid HTTP for HTTP as state-synchronization

Connections

1. Non-persistent HTTP (v1.0)
   • At most one object is sent over each TCP connection
   • Connection is closed as soon as data is transferred
   • Include an additional round trip for the TCP handshake for each object = $2n$ RTTs where $n$ is number of resources
2. Persistent HTTP (v1.1)
   • Multiple requests can be sent over single connection
   • Keep-Alive header
   • Round trip for each resource = $n+1$ RTTs where $n$ is number of resources
   • Pipelining:
     • Can send all the requests at once!
     • Process them all sequentially but get all the responses in the same order as the requests
     • Round trip = 3 RTTs (one for handshake, one for initial resource, one for the rest of the resources)
   • Server has the right to close any connection
     • Usual heuristic is to close the connection after 5 seconds of inactivity

Cache

• Browser may maintain a cached version of page
• Cache can also be maintained by a separate host (a proxy e.g. Varnish)
• Web servers can provide cache policy
• Calculating cache speedups
  • Cache time = $rRT{T}_{\text{cache}}+(1-r)(RT{T}_{\text{server}}+RT{T}_{\text{cache}})$ where $r$ is the cache hit rate

Cookies

• Used for storing per-user state
  • ”Remember me” authentication
  • Session state
• Applicable for a particular hostname
• Response from server includes Set-Cookie header
• Browser saves cookie associated with the server
• Next request to the same server will include Cookie header with the same value
• Two styles of using cookies
  • All the state is in the cookie
    • Total header size limited by servers (~8KBytes)
    • Individual cookie size limited by browsers (~4KBytes)
  • State (or part of it) may be stored server-side: cookie is used to identify entry in server database

Client/server model

• Client: browser that requests, receives, displays Web objects
• Server: sends objects in response to requests
• Uses TCP port 80 (443 for HTTPS)
• For each object
  • Client sends one request message at once
  • Server sends full response message at once
• Server is stateless

Message Format

• Request
  • First line: method, URL, version
  • Headers:
    • Header-Name: value<CR-LF>
    • Required
      • Host: <domain>
      • User-Agent: <browser/version>
    • Empty line to end header section
  • Body here
    • Size determined by Content-Length header
• Response
  • First line: version, response code, response text

Request Methods

1. GET
   1. relevant data is in URL
   2. form data (if needed) is in URL
2. POST
   1. includes form input in message body
   2. used in forms that submit new data
3. HEAD
   1. similar to GET but only returns header
   2. used to check if existing content was modified

Codes

1. 2xx: success
2. 3xx: additional action required
3. 4xx: client problem
4. 5xx: server problem

WWW

• A web page consists of objects
• Each object is addressable by a URL