The Internet: HTTP and HTML

Tumblr founder David Karp and Xbox program manager Jasmine Lawrence give a detailed description of how the Internet works using HTTP and HTML.

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The Internet: HTTP and HTML

I'm Jasmine and I'm a program
manager on the XBOX One engineering

team. One of our biggest features is called
XBOX Live. It's an online service that connects

gamers from all around the world, and we rely
on the internet to make that happen. This

is no easy task and there are a lot of things
happening behind the scenes. The internet

is totally changing how people interact and
connect. But how does it work? How do the

computers all across the world actually communicate
with each other? Let's look at web browsing.

First, you open a web browser. It's the app
you use to access the web pages. Next, you

type in the web address, or URL, which stands
for Uniform Resource Locator of the website

you want to visit like tumblr.com. Hi, I'm
David Karp, the founder of Tumblr and we're

here today to talk about how those web browsers
we use everyday actually work. So you've probably

wondered what actually happens when you type
an address into your web browser and then

hit enter. And it really is about as crazy
as you can imagine. So in that moment your

computer starts talking to another computer,
called a server, that's usually thousands

of miles away. And in milliseconds your computer
asks that server for a website, and that server

starts to talk back to your computer in a
language called HTTP. HTTP stands for HyperText

Transfer Protocol. You can kind of think of
it as the language that one computer uses

to ask another computer for a document. And
it's actually really pretty straightforward.

If you were to intercept the conversation
between your computer and a web server on

the internet, it's mainly made up of something
called "GET" requests. Those are really very

simply the word GET and the name of the document
that you're requesting. So if you try to log

into Tumblr and load our login page, all you're
doing is sending a GET request to Tumblr's

server that says GET /login. And that tells
Tumblr's server that you want all of the HTML

code for the Tumblr login page. So HTML stands
for Hyper Text Markup Language and you can

think of that as the language you use to tell
a web browser how to make a page look. If

you think about something like Wikipedia,
which is really just a big simple document

and HTML is the language that you use to make
that title big and bold, to make the font

the right font, to link certain text to certain
other pages, to make some text bold, to make some

text italic, to put an image in the middle
of the page, to align the image to the right,

to align the image to the left. The text of
a web page is included directly in the HTML,

but other parts like images or videos are
separate files with their own URLs that need

to be requested. The browser sends separate
HTTP requests for each of these and displays

them as they arrive. If a web page has a lot
of different images, each of them causes a

separate HTTP request and the page loads slower.
Now sometimes when you browse the web, you're

not just requesting pages with GET requests.
Sometimes you send information like when you

fill out a form or type a search query. Your
browser sends this information in plain text

to the web server using an HTTP POST request.
Let's say you log in to Tumblr. Well the first

thing you do is you make a POST request, that
is a POST to Tumblr's login page that has

some data attached to it. It has your email
address, it has your password. That goes to

Tumblr's server. Tumblr's server figures out
that okay, you're David. It sends a web page

back to your browser that says, Success! Logged
in as David. But along with that web page,

it also attaches a little bit of invisible cookie
data that your browser sees and knows to save.

And it's really important because it's really
the only way that a website can remember who

you are. All that cookie data really is, is
an ID card for Tumblr. It's a number that

identifies you as David. And your web browser
holds on to that number and the next time

you refresh Tumblr, the next time you go to
Tumblr.com, your web browser knows to automatically

attach that ID number with the request that
it sends over to Tumblr's servers. So now

Tumblr's servers sees the request coming from
your browser, sees the ID number, and knows

"Ok, this is a request from David."
Now, the internet is completely open. All

of its connections are shared and information
is sent in plain text. This makes it possible

for hackers to snoop on any personal information
that you send over the internet. But safe

websites prevent this, by asking your web
browser to communicate on a secure channel

using something called Secure Sockets Layer
and its successor Transport Layer Security.

You can think of SSL and TLS as a layer of
security wrapped around your communications

to protect them from snooping or tampering.
SSL and TLS are active when you see the little

lock that appears in your browser address
bar, next to the HTTPS. The HTTPS protocols

ensure that your HTTP requests are secure
and protected. When a website asks your browser

to engage in a secure connection, it first
provides a digital certificate. Which is like

an official ID card proving that it's the
website it claims to be. Digital certificates

are published by certificate authorities,
which are trusted entities that verify the

identities of websites and issue certificates
for them. Just like a government can issue

IDs or passports. Now if a website tries to
start a secure connection without a properly

issued digital certificate, your browser will
warn you. That's the basics of web browsing!

The part of the internet we see day to day.
To summarize, HTTP and DNS manage the sending

and receiving of HTML, media files, or anything
on the web. What makes this possible under

the hood are TCP/IP and router networks that
break down and transport information in small

packets. Those packets themselves are made
up of binary, sequences of 1s and 0s that

are physically sent through electric wires,
fiber optic cables, and wireless networks.

Fortunately, once you've learned how one layer
of the internet works, you can rely on it

without remembering all the details. And we
can trust that all those layers will work

together to successively deliver information
at scale and with reliability.