How the World Wide Web works

It’s helpful to understand a little about how the World Wide Web (WWW) works. The Web is a network of computers that offer Web pages. Millions of Web sites are on the Web. To enable Web surfers to find the Web sites they want to visit, each Web page has an address, called a URL.

This includes the Web site’s domain name and the file-name, such as www.mycompany.com/welcome.html.When Web surfers want to visit a Web page, they type the URL into their Web browsers. The following process is set in motion -

1. The Web browser sends a message out onto the Web, requesting the Web page.
2. The message is sent to the computer at the address specified in the URL.
3. The Web server software on the addressed computer receives the message.
4. The Web server searches for the requested HTML file.
5. The Web server finds the requested file and sends the file to the Web browser that requested it. (If it can’t find the file, it sends a message to the browser saying that it couldn’t find the file.)
6. The Web browser displays the Web page based on the HTML code it received.