In this tutorial we will see how client-server model works. The WWW Web follows a client-server model. The server is called Web Server and the browser works as client. The browser is a client program that helps user to communicate with a server program (or web server). Webserver is an program that runs on a remote/host computer. To access the information hosted on webserver, the client sends the request to the server. The server handles the request and sends the response back to the user.
A Web Server is the most visible part of your Internet. The Web server hosts Web pages and these pages can be information’s about an organization or a business. These Web Pages are files in a specialized format known as Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML). A Web Server communicates with browsers using the HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) or HTTPS (for secured web transactions), which runs over TCP/IP.(Image courtesy http://contentdeliverance.com/)
HTML files are text files with special tags. HTML files do not contain proprietary custom symbols or formatting characters. All formatting is specified with special combinations of ASCII text characters. HTML files can include text or graphic links, which users can click on to move to another location in the same file or to another file on any web server in the world.
Implementation and maintenance of Web server are very critical functions. These can range from personal Web Servers to Heavy-duty freeware, shareware to commercial ones. The choice of Web Servers would depend on the volume of the Web pages that you expect to put up and the number of clients accessing them.
Basic Web Server Features
- HTTP Compliance: The benefits include persistent connection, pipelining, and caching directives for performance, and host headers for multiple Web sites.
- Browser Neutral Host Header Support: The Web server should be able to host multiple Web sites using a single I P address. This will also help Web browsers that do not support host headers.
- Discussion Groups: The Web server should include support for creating local discussion groups for a single server using the NNTP protocol.
- Mail enabled administrators should be able to receive mail driven by events on the Web server.
Basic Web Server Features
- Enhanced integrated set-up and administration such as Web based administration, Web site operators, per Web site bandwidth throttling, and configuration replication.
- Reliable Web application development and deployment which includes transactional active server pages, crash protection, crash recovery, integrated fail over clustering support/ component load/unload.
- Standards based data access like database connectivity.
- Integrated authentication and security with support for integrated certificate server, domain blocking.
- Rich content management and control like integrated indexing and searching, content expiration, document footers, custom errors, custom headers, one-to-one content replication, redirects, complete and comprehensive documentation.
