Chapter 1

Web Essentials: Clients, Servers, and

Communication

Client/Server
Networking Model

Components
Clients
Servers
Communication Networks

Clients
Applications that run on computers
Rely on servers for

Files

Devices

Processing power

Clients are Applications

Example: E-mail client

An application that enables you to send and receive e-mail

Servers
Computers or processes that manage
network resources
Disk

drives (file servers)

Printers (print servers)
Network traffic (network servers)

Servers Manage
Resources

Example: Database Server

A computer system that processes database
queries
5

Communication Networks
Networks Connect
Clients and Servers

The Internet
Technical origin: ARPANET (late 1960s)

One of earliest attempts to network

heterogeneous, geographically dispersed
computers
Email first available on ARPANET in 1972 (and
quickly very popular!)

ARPANET access was limited to select

DoD-funded organizations
7

The Internet
Open-access networks

Regional university networks (e.g., SURAnet)

CSNET for CS departments not on ARPANET

NSFNET (1985-1995)

Primary purpose: connect supercomputer centers

Secondary purpose: provide backbone to connect
regional networks
8

The Internet

The 6 supercomputer centers connected by the early NSFNET backbone

9

The Internet
Original NSFNET backbone speed: 56 kbit/s
Upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s (T1) in 1988
Upgraded to 45 Mbit/s (T3) in 1991
In 1988, networks in Canada and France
connected to NSFNET
In 1990, ARPANET is decommissioned, NSFNET
the center of the internet
10

The Internet
Internet: the network of networks
connected via the public backbone and
communicating using TCP/IP
communication protocol

Backbone initially supplied by NSFNET,

privately funded (ISP fees) beginning in 1995

11

Internet Protocols
Communication protocol: how computers
talk

Cf. telephone protocol: how you answer and

end call, what language you speak, etc.

Internet protocols developed as part of

ARPANET research

ARPANET began using TCP/IP in 1982

Designed for use both within local area

networks (LANs) and between networks
12

Internet Protocol (IP)

IP is the fundamental protocol defining the
Internet (as the name implies!)
IP address:

32-bit number (in IPv4)

Associated with at most one device at a time
(although device may have more than one)
Written as four dot-separated bytes, e.g.
192.0.34.166
13

IP
IP function: transfer data from source device to
destination device
IP source software creates a packet representing
the data

Header: source and destination IP addresses, length of

data, etc.
Data itself

If destination is on another LAN, packet is sent to

a gateway that connects to more than one network
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IP
Source
Network 1

Gateway

Destination
Gateway

Network 2

Network 3

15

IP
Source
LAN 1

Gateway

Destination
Gateway

Internet Backbone

LAN 2

16

Transmission Control Protocol

(TCP)
Limitations of IP:

No guarantee of packet delivery (packets can be

dropped)
Communication is one-way (source to
destination)

TCP adds concept of a connection on top of

IP

Provides guarantee that packets delivered

Provide two-way (full duplex) communication
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TCP
Establish
connection.

Can I talk to you?

OK. Can I talk to you?
OK.

{
{

Send packet
with
acknowledgment.
Resend packet if
no (or delayed)
acknowledgment.

Heres a packet.
Source

Got it.

Destination

Heres a packet.
Heres a resent packet.
Got it.
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TCP
TCP also adds concept of a port

TCP header contains port number representing

an application program on the destination
computer
Some port numbers have standard meanings
Example:

port 25 is normally used for email

transmitted using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
(SMTP)

Other port numbers are available first-come-first

served to any application
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TCP

20

User Datagram Protocol (UDP)

Like TCP in that:

Builds on IP
Provides port concept

Unlike TCP in that:

No connection concept
No transmission guarantee

Advantage of UDP vs. TCP:

Lightweight, so faster for one-time messages

21

Domain Name Service (DNS)

DNS is the phone book for the Internet

Map between host names and IP addresses

DNS often uses UDP for communication

Host names

Labels separated by dots, e.g.,

www.example.org
Final label is top-level domain
Generic:

.com, .org, etc.

Country-code: .us, .il, etc.
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DNS
Domains are divided into second-level
domains, which can be further divided into
subdomains, etc.

E.g., in www.example.com, example is a

second-level domain

A host name plus domain name information

is called the fully qualified domain name of
the computer

Above, www is the host name,

www.example.com is the FQDN

23

DNS
nslookup program provides commandline access to DNS (on most systems)
looking up a host name given an IP address
is known as a reverse lookup

Recall that single host may have multiple IP

addresses.
Address returned is the canonical IP address
specified in the DNS system.
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DNS
ipconfig (on windows) can be used to
find the IP address (addresses) of your
machine
ipconfig /displaydns displays the
contents of the DNS Resolver Cache
(ipconfig /flushdns to flush it)

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Analogy to Telephone Network

IP ~ the telephone network
TCP ~ calling someone who answers,
having a conversation, and hanging up
UDP ~ calling someone and leaving a
message
DNS ~ directory assistance

26

Higher-level Protocols
Many protocols build on TCP

Telephone analogy: TCP specifies how we

initiate and terminate the phone call, but some
other protocol specifies how we carry on the
actual conversation

Some examples:

SMTP (email) (25)

FTP (file transfer) (21)
HTTP (transfer of Web documents) (80)

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World Wide Web

Originally, one of several systems for
organizing Internet-based information

Competitors: WAIS, Gopher, ARCHIE

Distinctive feature of Web: support for

hypertext (text containing links)

Communication via Hypertext Transport

Protocol (HTTP)
Document representation using Hypertext
Markup Language (HTML)
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World Wide Web

The Web is the collection of machines
(Web servers) on the Internet that provide
information, particularly HTML documents,
via HTTP.
Machines that access information on the
Web are known as Web clients. A Web
browser is software used by an end user to
access the Web.
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Hypertext Transport Protocol

(HTTP)
HTTP is based on the request-response
communication model:

Client sends a request

Server sends a response

HTTP is a stateless protocol:

The protocol does not require the server to

remember anything about the client between
requests.
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HTTP
Normally implemented over a TCP connection (80
is standard port number for HTTP)
Typical browser-server interaction:

User enters Web address in browser

Browser uses DNS to locate IP address
Browser opens TCP connection to server
Browser sends HTTP request over connection
Server sends HTTP response to browser over connection
Browser displays body of response in the client area of
the browser window
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HTTP
The information transmitted using HTTP is
often entirely text
Can use the Internets Telnet protocol to
simulate browser request and view server
response

32

HTTP
Connect

Send
Request

{
{

Receive
Response

$ telnet www.example.org 80
Trying 192.0.34.166...
Connected to www.example.com
(192.0.34.166).
Escape character is ^].
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.org
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2003 20:30:49 GMT

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HTTP Request
Structure of the request:

start line
header field(s)
blank line
optional body

34

HTTP Request
Structure of the request:

start line
header field(s)
blank line
optional body

35

HTTP Request
Start line

Example: GET / HTTP/1.1

Three space-separated parts:

HTTP request method

Request-URI (Uniform Resource Identifier)
HTTP version

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HTTP Request
Start line

Example: GET / HTTP/1.1

Three space-separated parts:

HTTP request method

Request-URI
HTTP version
We

will cover 1.1, in which version part of start line

must be exactly as shown
37

HTTP Request
Start line

Example: GET / HTTP/1.1

Three space-separated parts:

HTTP request method

Request-URI
HTTP version

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HTTP Request
Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)

Syntax: scheme : scheme-depend-part

In http://www.example.com/
the scheme is http

Ex:

Request-URI is the portion of the requested URI

that follows the host name (which is supplied by
the required Host header field)
/ is Request-URI portion of
http://www.example.com/

Ex:

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URI
URIs are of two types:

Uniform Resource Name (URN)

Can

be used to identify resources with unique names,

such as books (which have unique ISBNs)
Scheme is urn

Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

Specifies

location at which a resource can be found

In addition to http, some other URL schemes are
https, ftp, mailto, and file
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HTTP Request
Start line

Example: GET / HTTP/1.1

Three space-separated parts:

HTTP request method

Request-URI
HTTP version

41

HTTP Request
Common request methods:

GET
Used

if link is clicked or address typed in browser

No body in request with GET method

POST
Used

when submit button is clicked on a form

Form information contained in body of request

HEAD
Requests

that only header fields (no body) be returned

in the response
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HTTP Request
Structure of the request:

start line
header field(s)
blank line
optional body

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HTTP Request
Header field structure:

field name : field value

Syntax

Field name is not case sensitive

Field value may continue on multiple lines by
starting continuation lines with white space
Field values may contain MIME types, quality
values, and wildcard characters (*s)
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Multipurpose Internet Mail

Extensions (MIME)
Convention for specifying content type of a
message

In HTTP, typically used to specify content type

of the body of the response

MIME content type syntax:

top-level type / subtype

Examples: text/html, image/jpeg

45

HTTP Quality Values and

Wildcards
Example header field with quality values:
accept:
text/xml,text/html;q=0.9,
text/plain;q=0.8,
image/jpeg,
image/gif;q=0.2,*/*;q=0.1
Quality value applies to all preceding items
Higher the value, higher the preference
Note use of wildcards to specify quality 0.1
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for any MIME type not specified earlier

HTTP Request
Common header fields:

Host: host name from URL (required)

User-Agent: type of browser sending request
Accept: MIME types of acceptable documents
Connection: value close tells server to close
connection after single request/response
Content-Type: MIME type of (POST) body, normally
application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: bytes in body
Referer: URL of document containing link that supplied
URI for this HTTP request
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HTTP Response
Structure of the response:

status line
header field(s)
blank line
optional body

48

HTTP Response
Structure of the response:

status line
header field(s)
blank line
optional body

49

HTTP Response
Status line

Example: HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Three space-separated parts:

HTTP version
status code
reason phrase (intended for human use)

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HTTP Response
Status code

Three-digit number
First digit is class of the status code:
1=Informational
2=Success
3=Redirection (alternate URL is supplied)
4=Client Error
5=Server Error

Other two digits provide additional information

See http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html
51

HTTP Response
Structure of the response:

status line
header field(s)
blank line
optional body

52

HTTP Response
Common header fields:

Connection, Content-Type, Content-Length

Date: date and time at which response was generated
(required)
Location: alternate URI if status is redirection
Last-Modified: date and time the requested resource was
last modified on the server
Expires: date and time after which the clients copy of
the resource will be out-of-date
ETag: a unique identifier for this version of the requested
resource (changes if resource changes)
53

Client Caching
A cache is a local copy of information
obtained from some other source
Most web browsers use cache to store
requested resources so that subsequent
requests to the same resource will not
necessarily require an HTTP
request/response

Ex: icon appearing multiple times in a Web page

54

Client

Client Caching

Server

1. HTTP request for image

2. HTTP response containing image
Browser

Web
Server

3. Store image

Cache

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Client

Browser
I need that
image
again

Client Caching

Server

Web
Server

Cache

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Client

Client Caching

Server

This

Browser
I need that
image
again

HTTP request for image

HTTP response containing image

Web
Server

Cache

57

Client

Client Caching

Web
Server

Browser
I need that
image
again
Get
image

Server

or this

Cache

58

Client Caching
Cache advantages

(Much) faster than HTTP request/response

Less network traffic
Less load on server

Cache disadvantage

Cached copy of resource may be invalid

(inconsistent with remote version)
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Client Caching
Validating cached resource:

Send HTTP HEAD request and check LastModified or ETag header in response
Compare current date/time with Expires header
sent in response containing resource
If no Expires header was sent, use heuristic
algorithm to estimate value for Expires
Ex:

Expires = 0.01 * (Date Last-Modified) + Date

60

Character Sets
Every document is represented by a string of
integer values (code points)
The mapping from code points to characters is
defined by a character set
Some header fields have character set values:

Accept-Charset: request header listing character sets that

the client can recognize

Ex: accept-charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.5

Content-Type: can include character set used to represent

the body of the HTTP message

Ex: Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

61

Character Sets
Technically, many character sets are
actually character encodings

An encoding represents code points using

variable-length byte strings
Most common examples are Unicode-based
encodings UTF-8 and UTF-16

IANA maintains complete list of Internetrecognized character sets/encodings

62

Character Sets
Typical US PC produces ASCII documents
US-ASCII character set can be used for such
documents, but is not recommended
UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1 are supersets of USASCII and provide international compatibility

UTF-8 can represent all ASCII characters using a single

byte each and arbitrary Unicode characters using up to 4
bytes each
ISO-8859-1 is 1-byte code that has many characters
common in Western European languages, such as
63

Web Clients
Many possible web clients:

Text-only browser (lynx)

Mobile phones
Robots (software-only clients, e.g., search engine
crawlers)
etc.

We will focus on traditional web browsers

64

Web Browsers
First graphical browser running on generalpurpose platforms: Mosaic (1993)

65

Web Browsers

66

Web Browsers
Primary tasks:

Convert web addresses (URLs) to HTTP

requests
Communicate with web servers via HTTP
Render (appropriately display) documents
returned by a server

67

HTTP URLs
http://www.example.org:56789/a/b/c.txt?t=win&s=chess#para5
host (FQDN)
authority

port

path

query

fragment

Request-URI

Browser uses authority to connect via TCP

Request-URI included in start line (/ used
for path if none supplied)
Fragment identifier not sent to server (used
to scroll browser client area)
68

Web Browsers
Standard features

Save web page to disk

Find string in page
Fill forms automatically (passwords, CC numbers, )
Set preferences (language, character set, cache and
HTTP parameters)
Modify display style (e.g., increase font sizes)
Display raw HTML and HTTP header info (e.g., LastModified)
Choose browser themes (skins)
View history of web addresses visited
Bookmark favorite pages for easy return
69

Web Browsers
Additional functionality:

Execution of scripts (e.g., drop-down menus)

Event handling (e.g., mouse clicks)
GUI for controls (e.g., buttons)
Secure communication with servers
Display of non-HTML documents (e.g., PDF)
via plug-ins
70

Web Servers
Basic functionality:

Receive HTTP request via TCP

Map Host header to specific virtual host (one of many
host names sharing an IP address)
Map Request-URI to specific resource associated with
the virtual host
File: Return file in HTTP response
Program: Run program and return output in HTTP response

Map type of resource to appropriate MIME type and use

to set Content-Type header in HTTP response
Log information about the request and response
71

Web Servers
httpd: UIUC, primary Web server c. 1995
Apache: A patchy version of httpd, now the
most popular server (esp. on Linux platforms)
IIS: Microsoft Internet Information Server
Tomcat:

Java-based
Provides container (Catalina) for running Java servlets
(HTML-generating programs) as back-end to Apache or
IIS
Can run stand-alone using Coyote HTTP front-end
72

Web Servers
Some Coyote communication parameters:

Allowed/blocked IP addresses
Max. simultaneous active TCP connections
Max. queued TCP connection requests
Keep-alive time for inactive TCP connections

Modify parameters to tune server

performance
73

Web Servers
Some Catalina container parameters:

Virtual host names and associated ports

Logging preferences
Mapping from Request-URIs to server resources
Password protection of resources
Use of server-side caching

74

Tomcat Web Server

HTML-based server administration
Browse to
http://localhost:8080
and click on Server Administration link

localhost is a special host name that means

this machine

75

Tomcat Web Server

76

Tomcat Web Server

77

Tomcat Web Server

78

Tomcat Web Server

Some Connector fields:

Port Number: port owned by this connector

Max Threads: max connections processed
simultaneously
Connection Timeout: keep-alive time

79

Tomcat Web Server

80

Tomcat Web Server

Each Host is a virtual host (can have
multiple per Connector)
Some fields:

Host: localhost or a fully qualified domain name

Application Base: directory (may be path relative
to JWSDP installation directory) containing
resources associated with this Host
81

Tomcat Web Server

82

Tomcat Web Server

Context provides mapping from Request-URI path
to a web application
Document Base field is directory (possibly
relative to Application Base) that contains resources
for this web application
For this example, browsing to
http://localhost:8080/
returns resource from
c:\jwsdp-1.3\webapps\ROOT

Returns index.html (standard welcome file)

83

Tomcat Web Server

Access log records HTTP requests
Parameters set using AccessLogValve
Default location: logs/access_log.* under
JWSDP installation directory
Example common log format entry (one line):
www.example.org - admin
[20/Jul/2005:08:03:22 -0500]
"GET /admin/frameset.jsp
HTTP/1.1"
200 920
84

Tomcat Web Server

Other logs provided by default in JWSDP:

Message log messages sent to log service by web

applications or Tomcat itself
logs/jwsdp_log.*:

default message log

logs/localhost_admin_log.*: message log
for web apps within /admin context

System.out and System.err output (exception

traces often found here):
logs/launcher.server.log
85

Tomcat Web Server

Access control:

Password protection (e.g., admin pages)

Users

and roles defined in

conf/tomcat-users.xml

Deny access to machines

Useful

for denying access to certain users by denying

access from the machines they use
List of denied machines maintained in
RemoteHostValve (deny by host name) or
RemoteAddressValve (deny by IP address)

86

Secure Servers
Since HTTP messages typically travel over
a public network, private information (such
as credit card numbers) should be encrypted
to prevent eavesdropping
https URL scheme tells browser to use
encryption
Common encryption standards:

Secure Socket Layer (SSL)

Transport Layer Security (TLS)
87

Secure
Servers
Id like to talk securely to you (over port 443)
HTTP
Requests

Heres my certificate and encryption data

HTTP
Requests

Heres an encrypted HTTP request

Browser

TLS/
SSL

Heres an encrypted HTTP response

TLS/
SSL

Web
Server

Heres an encrypted HTTP request

HTTP
Responses

Heres an encrypted HTTP response

HTTP
Responses

88

Secure Servers
Man-in-the-Middle Attack
Fake
DNS
Server
Whats IP
address for
100.1.1.1
www.example.org?

Browser

Fake
www.example.org
100.1.1.1
My credit card number is

Real
www.example.org

89

Secure Servers
Preventing Man-in-the-Middle
Fake
DNS
Server
Whats IP
address for
100.1.1.1
www.example.org?

Browser

Fake
www.example.org
100.1.1.1
Send me a certificate of identity

Real
www.example.org

90