1.3 The World Wide Web
| 1. | It is important to be able to distinguish between the Internet and the WWW. In simple terms: |
| a) | The WWW is an application for publishing and sharing data, | |
| b) | It is supported by the Internet, which is the internetwork that connects both data publishers and data consumers. |
| 2. | The operation of the WWW is governed by the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) which is responsible for managing the exchange of messages between clients (data consumers) through web browsers and web servers (on which published data resides). |
| 3. | Figure 1.2 illustrates a simple exchange of messages between a client and server. |
| a) | The client requests access to Mediu’s home page http://www.mediu.edu.my through its web browser. | |
| b) | A HTTP request message is generated by the web browser and sent to the web server hosting the university’s site over the Internet. | |
| c) | The web server receives the request and a number HTTP reply messages are formed containing the content of Mediu’s home page. | |
| d) | Those pages are sent to the client’s web browser which interpret the HTTP messages’ content and display the page. |