Download Internet Protocols

Unit 28 – Website Production
Claire Payne
Internet Protocols
Computers use protocols to communicate across the Internet. A protocol is a set of agreed
instructions to do something a particular way.
HTTP
The protocol commonly known as HTTP is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer
Protocol. These four letters are likely to appear in lowercase in the address bar of a web
browser while viewing this article. They are located at the beginning of the address and
are used to tell the browser how to properly process the data on the page and display the
data to a computer user. The word hyper in the acronym is used to specify that the text is
not linear and can actually be linked in many ways. HTTP was originally used as a way to
display text, but browsers have evolved to be able to display much more using the
protocol.
FTP
The primary protocol used to transfer large amounts of data from place to place across the
Internet is known as FTP. FTP is an acronym that appropriately stands for File Transfer
Protocol. Computers known as FTP servers are places on the Internet where files can be
stored and accessed via File Transfer Protocol. A computer user may access an FTP server
using FTP client software. Popular web browsers are also able to access files that are
located on an FTP server. An FTP server basically appears to a computer user as a remote
hard drive and browsing the files on an FTP server is similar to browsing a computer's
hard drive with a file manager.
TCP/IP
The network protocol suite that is primarily responsible for the transfer of raw data across
the Internet is known as TCP/IP. The acronym stands for Transfer Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol. The TCP side primarily describes how computers connect and
how data is to be transmitted across the Internet properly. Internet network addressing
concepts such as an IP address are part of the IP side of the TCP/IP protocol suite. Each
connection to the Internet has a unique numeric address known as an IP address.
Alphanumeric web addresses translated into a numeric IP address and a computer known
as a web server is contacted at the remote IP address to provide the page seen in a browser
where the alphanumeric address was typed.