How the World Wide Web Works
The World Wide Web is a vast collection of information that is spread across hundreds of thousands of computers around the world. When you access a document on the Web, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes.
Here’s a very simple and brief description.
Tip Sheet
- Many people consider the World Wide Web and the Internet to be one and the same. The World Wide Web is only part of the Internet, but it’s growing at a faster rate than any other part.
- You can read about how the Internet works in How to Use the Internet, Third Edition from Ziff-Davis Press.
- The World Wide Web is a network of thousands of computers, all of which fall neatly into two categories: clients and servers. Through the use of special software, they form a kind of network called, not
surprisingly, a client-server network.
- Servers store information and process requests from clients. Then they send the requested information to the clients. This information includes all kinds of data, including images, sounds, and text. Servers also send
- instructions to the client on how to display all this information. These instructions are sent in the form of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).
- Clients make requests for information and then handle the chore of displaying that information to the end user. When you are using a Web browser to navigate the Web, your browsing software is acting as a client.
- The World Wide Web is a distributed network. That means there is no central computer for the World Wide Web. Any server on the Web can be accessed directly by any client. If a server on the World Wide
- Web malfunctions, it doesn’t affect the performance of other servers.
- Users navigate the World Wide Web through the use of hypertext links. When you select or click on a hypertext link, you go to another area on the Internet. Almost all of the documents on the Web are
interconnected through the use of hypertext links.
- Most of the documents on the World Wide Web are written in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML provides instructions for the client software on how the document should be displayed. HTML also
contains information about how to link up to other documents on the Web.