What is HTTP?
Anyone who uses the Internet is likely familiar to http. If you use the Internet, you will find http at the beginning of every Internet address, or uniform resource locator (URL). Http stands for hypertext transfer protocol. Http is a language of networking communication. The World Wide Web (www) primarily uses this language to exchange data such as text, images, sound and other file via the Internet.

The protocol allows the exchange of data between connected computers around the world. In other words, it is a tool used for the transmission and receipt of data across the Internet. Different agents that work around the internet use this protocol to allow a rapid and accurate distribution of information. It is commonly utilized to retrieve or work on html pages.

In cases where Internet users want to access confidential data or information, a secure hypertext transfer protocol is used. This secured http is also known as https. Https works similarly as the http. However, Netscape developed the secured http for the reason of security. This protocol prevents unauthorized access to confidential information.

When it comes to the protocol or procedure being followed, both http and https use the same. A client or an application used to access the internet, which is known as the web browser, uses same protocol to set up link to a server. The two protocols use the same uniform resource locator. It was designed like that to identify the resourced universally. The use of https will indicate that the connection desired is encrypted.

However, although similarly designed to follow similar procedures, there is also a slight difference between the two protocols. The difference is about the default port, which is 80 and 443 for http and https, respectively. To understand it better, https works its way around the usual http communications. However, the communication passes through an encrypted system thus preventing access of other party not linked to the client and server.

The invention of http made a great advancement in the use of the Internet technology. This was all due to the hard work of Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee. He is also the same person who is responsible for the invention of the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee or Tim was an English physicist. Together with his team, Tim had managed to successfully make the hypertext transfer protocol to work. His idea came up in 1989 month of March. The actual exchange of data between linked computers was successfully done on the following year on the month of December.

HTTP runs on a model of a client-server. The computer that hosts a website acts as a server. On the other side is the client, which is the computer requesting to access the website or data bank. Just like any other technology, http has also evolved as time goes by. HTTP had introduced different versions. Different developers were responsible for the evolution of the protocol. IETF and the World Wide Web Consortium are the two developers who contributed to the HTTP evolution. Today, the most commonly used version is the HTTP 1.1