World Wide Web

In this tutorial, we will be covering the concept of the World Wide Web in Computer Networks.

The World Wide Web or Web is basically a collection of information that is linked together from points all over the world. It is also abbreviated as WWW.

• World wide web provides flexibility, portability, and user-friendly features.

• It mainly consists of a worldwide collection of electronic documents (i.e, Web Pages).

• It is basically a way of exchanging information between computers on the Internet.

• The WWW is mainly the network of pages consists of images, text, and sounds on the Internet which can be simply viewed on the browser by using the browser software.

• It was invented by Tim Berners-Lee.

Components of WWW

The Components of WWW mainly falls into two categories:

1. Structural Components

2. Semantic Components

Architecture of WWW

The WWW is mainly a distributed client/server service where a client using the browser can access the service using a server. The Service that is provided is distributed over many different locations commonly known as sites/websites.

• Each website holds one or more documents that are generally referred to as web pages.

• Where each web page contains a link to other pages on the same site or at other sites.

• These pages can be retrieved and viewed by using browsers.

In the above case, the client sends some information that belongs to site A. It generally sends a request through its browser (It is a program that is used to fetch the documents on the web).

and also the request generally contains other information like the address of the site, web page(URL).

The server at site A finds the document then sends it to the client. after that when the user or say the client finds the reference to another document that includes the web page at site B.

The reference generally contains the URL of site B. And the client is interested to take a look at this document too. Then after the client sends the request to the new site and then the new page is retrieved.

Now we will cover the components of WWW in detail.

1.Client/Browser

The Client/Web browser is basically a program that is used to communicate with the webserver on the Internet.

• Each browser mainly comprises of three components and these are:

  • Controller

  • Interpreter

  • Client Protocols

• The Controller mainly receives the input from the input device, after that it uses the client programs in order to access the documents.

• After accessing the document, the controller makes use of an interpreter in order to display the document on the screen.

• An interpreter can be Java, HTML, javascript mainly depending upon the type of the document.

• The Client protocol can be FTP, HTTP, TELNET.

2.Server

The Computer that is mainly available for the network resources and in order to provide services to the other computer upon request is generally known as the server.

• The Web pages are mainly stored on the server.

• Whenever the request of the client arrives then the corresponding document is sent to the client.

• The connection between the client and the server is TCP.

• It can become more efficient through multithreading or multiprocessing. Because in this case, the server can answer more than one request at a time.

3.URL

URL is an abbreviation of the Uniform resource locator.

• It is basically a standard used for specifying any kind of information on the Internet.

• In order to access any page the client generally needs an address.

• To facilitate the access of the documents throughout the world HTTP generally makes use of Locators.

URL mainly defines the four things:

• Protocol
  It is a client/server program that is mainly used to retrieve the document. A commonly used protocol is HTTP.

• Host Computer
  It is the computer on which the information is located. It is not mandatory because it is the name given to any computer that hosts the web page.

• Port
  The URL can optionally contain the port number of the server. If the port number is included then it is generally inserted in between the host and path and is generally separated from the host by the colon.

• Path
  It indicates the pathname of the file where the information is located.

4.HTML

HTML is an abbreviation of Hypertext Markup Language.

• It is generally used for creating web pages.

• It is mainly used to define the contents, structure, and organization of the web page.

5.XML

XML is an abbreviation of Extensible Markup Language. It mainly helps in order to define the common syntax in the semantic web.

Features of WWW

Given below are some of the features provided by the World Wide Web:

• Provides a system for Hypertext information

• Open standards and Open source

• Distributed.

• Mainly makes the use of Web Browser in order to provide a single interface for many services.

• Dynamic

• Interactive

• Cross-Platform

Advantages of WWW

Given below are the benefits offered by WWW:

• It mainly provides all the information for Free.

• Provides rapid Interactive way of Communication.

• It is accessible from anywhere.

• It has become the Global source of media.

• It mainly facilitates the exchange of a huge volume of data.

Disadvantages of WWW

There are some drawbacks of the WWW and these are as follows;

• It is difficult to prioritize and filter some information.

• There is no guarantee of finding what one person is looking for.

• There occurs some danger in case of overload of Information.

• There is no quality control over the available data.

• There is no regulation.