 Impact of the World Wide Web

o Transformation of lives in industrialized and unindustrialized countries

o Daily use for communication, shopping, and information gathering
o Role in social and political demonstrations and revolutions
 Downsides of the Web
o Easier access to harmful content (e.g., pornography and gambling)
o Ease of spreading destructive ideas
 Upsides of the Web
o Communication with friends, relatives, and business associates
o Online shopping for a wide variety of products
o Access to limitless information on various topics

1. A Brief Introduction to the Internet

1.1 Origins

 The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) developed a large-scale computer network in the
1960s for communications, program sharing, and remote computer access for defense-
related research.

 The network was required to be robust enough to continue functioning even if some
network nodes were lost due to sabotage, war, or other causes.

 ARPA (later renamed DARPA) funded the construction of the first network, ARPAnet,
connecting about a dozen research laboratories and universities, with the first node
established at UCLA in 1969.

 ARPAnet was primarily used for text-based communications through electronic mail and was
only available to ARPA-funded research institutions.

 Other networks, such as BITNET and CSNET, were developed in the late 1970s and early
1980s due to limited ARPAnet access.

 NSFnet, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), was created in 1986 and
eventually replaced ARPAnet for most nonmilitary uses. By 1992, NSFnet connected over 1
million computers worldwide.

 In 1995, a small part of NSFnet returned to being a research network, with the rest becoming
known as the Internet.

1.2 What Is the Internet?

 The Internet is a vast collection of interconnected computers and devices of various sizes,
configurations, and manufacturers.

 The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is the single, low-level protocol
that allows diverse devices to communicate with each other. TCP/IP became the standard for
computer network connections in 1982.

 The Internet is a network of networks, with individual computers within an organization

connected to each other in a local network, which is then connected to the Internet.

 All devices connected to the Internet must be uniquely identifiable.

  TCP/IP is not the only communication protocol used by the Internet; User Datagram
Protocol/Internet Protocol (UDP/IP) is an alternative used in some situations.

1.3 Internet Protocol Addresses

 Internet nodes identified by names for people and numeric addresses for computers

 Internet Protocol (IP) address is a unique 32-bit number for machines connected to the
Internet

 Written as four 8-bit numbers separated by periods

 Organizations assigned blocks of IP addresses for their machines that need Internet access

 IPv6 standard approved in late 1998, expanding address size from 32 bits to 128 bits

1.4 Domain Names

 Machines on the Internet have textual names due to people's difficulty dealing with numbers

 Domain names start with the host machine name, followed by progressively larger enclosing
collections of machines called domains

 Last domain name identifies the type of organization in which the host resides

 Fully qualified domain name (FQDN) is the combination of the hostname and all domain
names

 FQDN must be converted to an IP address before message transmission over the Internet

 Domain Name System (DNS) and name servers handle FQDN to IP address conversion

 FQDNs and IP addresses must be unique

Figure 1: Domain name conversion process

 telnet can be used to determine the IP address of a Web site

 Variety of protocols running on top of TCP/IP developed by the mid-1980s to support

different Internet uses

 World Wide Web emerged as a better approach to access the Internet's advantages

2. The World Wide Web

2.1 Origins
  In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee and a small group at CERN proposed a new protocol and document
access system for the Internet called the World Wide Web

 The Web aimed to allow scientists worldwide to exchange documents describing their work

 The system enabled users to search for and retrieve documents from databases on any
document-serving computer connected to the Internet

 The Web used hypertext, which is text with embedded links to other documents, allowing
nonsequential browsing

 The first implementation of the Web was on a NeXT computer at CERN in late 1990, and it
was released to the world in 1991

2.2 Web or Internet?

 The Internet and the Web are not the same thing

 The Internet is a collection of computers and devices connected by communication

equipment

 The Web is a collection of software and protocols installed on most, if not all, computers on
the Internet

 Web servers provide documents, while Web clients (browsers) request and display
documents to users

 The Internet was useful before the Web, and it remains useful without it, but most users now
access the Internet through the Web

3 Web Browsers

 Web operates in a client-server configuration, with browsers acting as clients and servers
providing documents
 Early browsers were text-based, limiting the growth of the Web
 Mosaic, released in early 1993, was the first browser with a graphical user interface,
developed at NCSA, University of Illinois
 Mosaic's interface provided convenient access to the Web for non-scientist and non-
developer users
 Versions of Mosaic for Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows systems were released in
late 1993, leading to explosive growth in Web usage
 Browsers initiate communication with servers, which respond to requests
 Servers may provide static documents or request user input through the browser
 The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the most common protocol used by the Web for
communication between browsers and servers
 Most commonly used browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, and Chrome,
with a focus on these in this text

4 Web Servers

4.1 Web Server Operation

 Web servers provide documents to requesting browsers

 Servers act when requests are made by browsers running on other computers
  Most commonly used web servers are Apache and Microsoft's Internet Information Server
(IIS)

 Web browsers initiate network communications with servers by sending URLs

 URLs can specify a data file or a program stored on the server

 All communications between a web client and a web server use the standard web protocol,
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

 Web servers monitor a communications port, accept HTTP commands, and perform specified
operations

4.2 General Server Characteristics

 File structure of a web server has two separate directories: document root and server root

 Document root stores web documents to which the server has direct access and normally
serves to clients

 Server root stores the server and its support software

 Files stored directly in the document root are available to clients through top-level URLs

 Virtual document trees allow part of the servable document collection to be stored outside
the directory at the document root

 Contemporary servers provide a wide variety of client services, including support for virtual
hosts and proxy servers

 Many servers can interact with database systems through server-side scripts

4.3 Apache

 Began as the NCSA server, httpd, with added features

 Most widely used web server due to its speed, reliability, and open-source nature

 Offers a long list of services beyond serving documents to clients

 Configuration information is read from a file when Apache begins execution

 Three configuration files: httpd.conf, srm.conf, and access.conf

 httpd.conf stores the directives that control Apache server behavior

4.4 IIS

 Most popular server on Windows platforms

 Supplied as part of Windows and considered a reasonably good server

 Apache and IIS provide similar services

 IIS is controlled by a window-based management program, IIS snap-in

 IIS snap-in controls both IIS and FTP, allowing site managers to set server parameters
  Accessed through Control Panel, Administrative Tools, and IIS Manager on Windows XP and
Vista

5. Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)

5.1 URL Formats

 All URLs have the same general format: scheme

 Common schemes include http, ftp, gopher, telnet, file, mailto, and news

 HTTP protocol is used to request and send HTML documents

 URL format for HTTP: //fully-qualified-domain-name/path-to-document

 File protocol is used for documents residing on the machine running the browser: file://path-
to-document

 Host name is the name of the server computer that stores the document or provides access
to it

 Default port number of Web server processes is 80; if a server uses a different port number,
it must be attached to the host name in the URL

 URLs cannot have embedded spaces or special characters; they must be coded as a percent
sign (%) followed by the two-digit hexadecimal ASCII code for the character

 Eg: if domain name ‘RV CE’ has to be specfied then it has to be written as ‘RV%20CE’ (20 is
ASCII code for space)

5.2 URL Paths

 Path to the document for the HTTP protocol is similar to a path to a file or directory in an
operating system's file system

 Path is given by a sequence of directory names and a file name, separated by the appropriate
separator character (forward slashes for UNIX servers, backward slashes for Windows
servers)

 Path in a URL can be complete (includes all directories along the way) or partial (relative to
some base path specified in the server's configuration files)

 If the specified document is a directory, its name is followed immediately by a slash

 If a directory does not have a file that the server recognizes as a home page, a directory
listing is constructed and returned to the browser

6. Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)

6.1 Type Specifications

 MIME was developed to specify the format of documents sent via Internet mail

 Adopted by the Web to specify document types transmitted over the Web

 MIME format specification attached to the beginning of a document by the Web server

 MIME specifications have the form: type/subtype

  Common MIME types: text, image, video

 Common text subtypes: plain, html

 Common image subtypes: gif, jpeg

 Common video subtypes: mpeg, quicktime

 Servers determine the type of a document by using the file name's extension as the key into
a table of types

6.2 Experimental Document Types

 Experimental subtypes begin with x-, e.g., video/x-msvideo

 Web providers can add an experimental subtype to the list of MIME specifications stored in
their server

 Browser must supply a program (helper application or plug-in) to display the contents of
experimental document types

 Browsers have a set of MIME specifications they can handle, and an error message is
displayed if they cannot render a document

 Browsers can indicate to the server their preferred document types to receive (discussed in
Section 7)

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

 All Web communications use HTTP

 Current version of HTTP is 1.1 (RFC 2616)

 HTTP consists of two phases: request and response

 Each HTTP communication has two parts: header and body

HTTP Request Phase

 General form: HTTP method Domain part of the URL HTTP version, header fields, blank line,
message body

 Commonly used HTTP request methods: GET, HEAD, POST, PUT, DELETE

 GET: returns the contents of the specified document

 HEAD: returns the header information for the specified document

 POST: executes the specified document using the enclosed data

 PUT: replaces the specified document with the enclosed data

 DELETE: deletes the specified document

 Most common request methods: GET and POST

 Header fields provide additional information, such as Accept (preferred MIME type) and Host
(host name)
  If-Modified-Since: date request field specifies that the requested file should be sent only if it
has been modified since the given date

 Content-length field gives the length of the response body in bytes

 Header of a request must be followed by a blank line

 Browser not necessary to communicate with a Web server; telnet can be used instead

7.2 The Response Phase

 General form of HTTP response consists of status line, response header fields, blank line, and
response body
 Status line includes HTTP version, three-digit status code, and short textual explanation of
status code
 Status codes categorized into five groups:
o Informational (1xx)
o Success (2xx)
o Redirection (3xx)
o Client error (4xx)
o Server error (5xx)
 Common status codes:
o 200 OK: request handled without error
o 404 Not Found: requested file not found
o 500 Internal Server Error: server encountered a problem
 Response header contains several lines of information about the response, with Content-
type being the essential field
 Response header followed by a blank line, then the response body (e.g., HTML file)
 HTTP 1.1 default operation keeps the connection open for a time, allowing multiple requests
without reestablishing the connection, increasing web efficiency

8 Security

 Internet and Web are prone to security problems

 Web server side: anyone can request software execution or access data on the server
 Browser end: any server can download software to be executed on the browser host
machine
 Security issues for transactions (e.g., credit card purchase): privacy, integrity, authentication,
nonrepudiation
 Security issues are
o Privacy: it shouldn’t be possible to steal the data while transmitting
o Integrity: it shouldn’t be possible to modify the data while transmitting
o Authentication: it should be possible for both ends to be certain of each others
identity
o Nonrepudiation: it should be possible to legally prove that the message was actually
sent and received
 Encryption is the basic tool to support privacy and integrity
 Public-key encryption uses a public key and a private key to encrypt and decrypt messages
 RSA is the most widely used public-key algorithm
  Intentional and malicious destruction of data on Internet-connected computers is another
security problem
 Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, viruses, and worms cause billions of dollars in damage
 DoS attacks flood a Web server with requests, overwhelming its ability to operate effectively
 Viruses replicate and overwrite memory, destroying programs and data
 Worms spread on their own and damage memory
 Protection against viruses and worms is provided by antivirus software, which must be
updated frequently

9. The Web Programmer's Toolbox

 HTML: A markup language used to describe the form and layout of documents for display in
a browser

 XML: A meta-markup language used to define custom markup languages

 JavaScript: A client-side scripting language used for creating dynamic web content

 PHP: A server-side scripting language used for creating dynamic web content

 Ruby: A server-side scripting language used for creating dynamic web content

 JSF (JavaServer Faces): A Java-based framework for building web applications

 ASP.NET: A Microsoft framework for building web applications

 Rails (Ruby on Rails): A Ruby-based framework for building web applications

 Flash: A technology for creating and displaying graphics and animation in HTML documents

 Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML): A web technology used for creating dynamic and
interactive web applications

9.1 Overview of HTML

 HTML is not a programming language; it cannot describe computations

 HTML documents consist of content and controls specified by tags

 Tags delimit particular kinds of content and form elements

 Some tags include attribute specifications for additional information

9.2 Tools for Creating HTML Documents

 HTML documents can be created with a general-purpose text editor

 HTML editors provide shortcuts for producing repetitious tags and may include spell-
checkers, syntax-checkers, and color-coding

 WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editors allow users to see the formatted
document while writing the HTML code

 Examples of WYSIWYG HTML editors: Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver

9.3 Plug-ins and Filters

  Plug-ins: Programs that can be integrated with a word processor to add new capabilities,
such as creating HTML documents with WYSIWYG features

 Filters: Converters that transform an existing document into HTML format; they are not part
of the editor or word processor that created the document

 Neither plug-ins nor filters produce HTML documents with identical appearance to the
original word processor document

 Using plug-ins or filters allows easy conversion of existing documents to HTML and the use of
familiar word processors for creating HTML documents

 HTML output produced by converters often needs modification, leading to version problems
during maintenance

9.4 Overview of XML

 XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a simplified version of SGML (Standard Generalized

Markup Language) for creating custom markup languages

 XML-based markup languages describe data and its meaning through individualized tags and
attributes, while HTML describes overall layout and presentation

 XML allows application programs to process specific kinds of data based on tag meanings
and validate documents before processing

9.5 Overview of JavaScript

 JavaScript is a client-side scripting language used for validating form data, building Ajax-
enabled HTML documents, and creating dynamic HTML documents

 JavaScript is dynamically typed, unlike strongly typed languages such as C++ and Java

 JavaScript code is embedded in HTML documents and interpreted by the browser on the
client-side

 JavaScript defines an object hierarchy for accessing and modifying elements of an HTML
document, enabling dynamic document creation and manipulation

SUMMARY

Internet and Web Fundamentals

 The Internet began as ARPAnet in the late 1960s and later became known as NSFnet for
nonmilitary users

 The Internet connects millions of computers worldwide through the TCP/IP protocol, making
them appear the same at the lowest level

 Two kinds of addresses are used on the Internet: IP addresses (four-part numbers for
computers) and fully qualified domain names (words separated by periods for people)

 Fully qualified domain names are translated to IP addresses by name servers running DNS

 A number of information interchange protocols have been created, including telnet, ftp, and
mailto
Web Basics

 The Web started in the late 1980s at CERN as a means for physicists to share results
efficiently with colleagues at other locations

 The fundamental idea of the Web is to transfer hypertext documents among computers
using the HTTP protocol on the Internet

 Browsers request HTML documents from Web servers and display them for users

 URLs are used to address all documents on the Internet, including the specific protocol, fully
qualified domain name, and file path to the specific document on the server

 Web servers find and send requested documents to browsers

 The type of a document delivered by a Web server appears as a MIME specification in the
first line of the document

Web Programming Languages and Tools

 Web programmers use several languages to create documents that servers can provide to
browsers

 HTML is the standard markup language for describing how Web documents should be
presented by browsers

 Tools like plug-ins and filters can be used without specific knowledge of HTML to create
HTML documents

 XML is a meta-markup language that provides a standard way to define new markup
languages

 JavaScript is a client-side scripting language that can be embedded in an HTML document to

describe simple computations and change elements dynamically

 Flash is a framework for building animation into HTML documents

 Ajax is an approach to building Web applications in which partial document requests are
handled asynchronously

 PHP is a server-side scripting language used primarily for form processing and database
access from browsers

 Servlets and JSP are server-side Java programs used for form processing, database access, or
building dynamic documents

 ASP.NET is a Web development framework using any .NET programming language

 Ruby, with the Rails framework, is used for building Web applications that access databases,
simplifying the development process