The internet is a network. The world wide web is an application that works with the internet. There are different services that the internet provides. The world wide web is one of these services. Read on for a high level explanation of how it works.
The World wide web, or web for short, works on the http protocol. Http stands for hypertext Transfer protocol. The web is a client server application. The servers are connected to the web and listen for requests via the internet. These web servers are running an http server of some kind. The most popular is the apache web server.
It is the job of the web server to receive requests and formulate responses to those requests. The URL tells which document to use in the response. Remember in our last discussion we were interested in the server and how we found it. The servers serves as just a part of the URL. The URL consists of protocol://server.name.com/path/to/document.html. In an http request the protocol is http. The server retrieves the indicated document and formulates a response which is sent back to the client.
The client is one of any number of applications that understands how to make requests, and read responses. The most popular clients for surfing the web are web browsers like Internet Explorer, or Safari.
It is the job of these browsers to “render” the page for the user. It then waits for either a link to be clicked on or a new URL to be entered into the URL entry area. It then formulates an http request which it passes to the server via the internet. It waits for a response. When it receives, the response it renders the page to the user. The whole cycle consists of a request followed by a response.
This is how the world wide web works at a very high level.
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