Understanding Web Server Terminology

Definition of Terms, Process, Components and Features

At the most basic level, the process for web communication works as follows: a computer runs a web browser that allows it to request, communicate and display HTML documents (web pages). Web browsers are the software applications that allow users to access and view these web pages and they run on individual computers. The most popular web browsers are Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, and Safari (for Mac). After typing in the URL (or address) and pressing return, the request is sent to a server machine that runs the web server. The web server is the program that delivers the files that make up web pages. Every web site or computer that creates a web site requires a web server. The most popular web server program is Apache. The server machine then returns the requested web page.

Communication over the Internet can be broken down into two interested parties: clients and servers. The machines providing services are servers. Clients are the machines used to connect to those services. For example, the personal computer requesting web pages according to search parameters (defined by key words) does not provide any services to other computers. This is the client. If the client requests a search from, for example, the search engine Yahoo!, Yahoo! is the server, providing the hardware machinery to service the request. As previously mentioned, each computer requesting information over the Internet requires a web server program like Apache to render the search result intelligible in HTML.

Web servers translate URL path components in local file systems. The URL path is dependent on the server’s root directory. The root directory is the top directory of a file system that usually exists hierarchically as an inverted tree. URL paths are similar to UNIX-like operating systems.

The typical client request reads, for example, “http://www.example.com/path/file.html”. This client web browser translates this request through an HTTP request and by connecting to “www.example.com”, in this case. The web server will then add the requested path to its root directory path. The result is located in the server’s local file system or hierarchy of directories. The server reads the file and responds to the browser’s request. The response contains the requested documents, in this case, web sites and the constituent pages.