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Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

HTTP_040523A
[HTTP - TechTarget]

     

    - HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) 

    The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-layer protocol in the Internet Protocol Family model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the basis for data communication on the World Wide Web, where hypertext documents include hyperlinks to other resources that users can easily access, such as by clicking a mouse or tapping the screen in a Web browser.

    HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is a set of rules for transferring files such as text, images, sound, video, and other multimedia files over a network. Once users open their web browsers, they are using HTTP indirectly. HTTP is an application protocol that runs on top of the TCP/IP protocol suite, which forms the basis of the Internet. 

     

    Please refer to Wikipedia: HTTP for more details.

     

    - The Beginning of HTTP

    The development of HTTP was initiated by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989 and summarized in a simple document describing the behavior of clients and servers using the first version of the HTTP protocol called 0.9. The first version of the HTTP protocol quickly evolved into a more detailed version, the first draft of a far-future version 1.0. 

    Development of an early HTTP Request for Comments (RFC) began a few years later as a coordinated effort between the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), before work was transferred to the IETF.

     

    - HTTP/1

    HTTP/1 was finalized and fully documented (as version 1.0) in 1996. It developed in 1997 (as version 1.1), then updated its specification in 1999, 2014, and 2022.  More than 80% of all websites use its secure variant called HTTPS.

     

    - HTTP/2

    HTTP/2, released in 2015, provides a more efficient expression of "on the wire" HTTP semantics. It is now used by 41% of websites and supported by almost all web browsers (over 97% of users). It is also supported by major web servers through Transport Layer Security (TLS) using the Application Layer Protocol Negotiation (ALPN) extension, which requires TLS 1.2 or newer. 

     

    - HTTP/3

    The successor of HTTP/2, HTTP/3, will be released in 2022. It is now used by over 25% of all websites and supported by many web browsers (over 75% of users). HTTP/3 uses QUIC instead of TCP as the underlying transport protocol. As with HTTP/2, it does not obsolete previous major versions of the protocol. Cloudflare and Google Chrome were the first to add support for HTTP/3, and Firefox also enabled it. HTTP/3 has lower latency for real-world web pages, and if enabled on the server, loads faster than HTTP/2, even faster than HTTP/1.1, in some cases more than 3 times faster than HTTP/1.1 (still normally only enabled).

     

     

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