Behind the Scenes

If you want to get into a bit more detail on the process of getting a Web page onto your computer screen, here are the basic steps that occurred behind the scenes:

  • The browser broke the URL into three parts:
    1. The protocol ("http")
    2. The server name ("www.howstuffworks.com")
    3. The file name ("web-server.htm")

  • The browser communicated with a name server to translate the server name "www.howstuffworks.com" into an IP Address, which it uses to connect to the server machine.

  • The browser then formed a connection to the server at that IP address on port 80. (We'll discuss ports later in this article.)

  • Following the HTTP protocol, the browser sent a GET request to the server, asking for the file "http://www.howstuffworks.com/web-server.htm." (Note that cookies may be sent from browser to server with the GET request -- see How Internet Cookies Work for details.)

  • The server then sent the HTML text for the Web page to the browser. (Cookies may also be sent from server to browser in the header for the page.)

  • The browser read the HTML tags and formatted the page onto your screen.

If you've never explored this process before, that's a lot of new vocabulary. To understand this whole process in detail, you need to learn about IP addresses, ports, protocols... The following sections will lead you through a complete explanation.