Brief insights about HTTP and Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP)
HTTP, acronym for HyperText Transfer Protocol, is the protocol clients and servers use on the web to communicate. The client sends an HTTP request, and the server answers with an HTTP response. It's a network protocol that has Web-specific features, but it depends on TCP/IP (Internet Protocol Suite) to get complete request and response from one place to another.
A brief insight about TCP is, it's responsible for making sure that a file sent from one network node to another ends up as a complete file at the destination, even though the file is split into chunks when it's sent.
IP is the underlying protocol that routes the chunks (packets) from one host to another on their way to destination.
Development of HTTP was initiated by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989. Development of early HTTP Requests for Comments (RFCs) was a coordinated effort by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), with work later moving to the IETF.
Roy Fielding maintains the IETF working group list of HTTP RFCs and Internet Drafts. For in-depth reference of HTTP1.1, refer RFC 7230 family (RFC 7230-7235).
HTTP versions and corresponding RFCs
- HTTP v1.0 RFC 1945
- HTTP v1.1 RFC 2616
- HTTP v1.1 RFC 7230, RFC 7231, RFC 7232, RFC 7233, RFC 7234, RFC 7235
- HTTP/2 RFC 7540
- HTTP/3 Proposed Internet Draft v29
References:
- IETF Tools | Internet Engineering Task Force
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol
Few More Important Resources that can be checked out: