UNIT-1

Prepared by: Dr. Chhabi Rani Panigrahi

Web essentials: Clients, Servers, and Communication

In client server computing, the clients requests a resource and the server provides that resource. A
server may serve multiple clients at the same time while a client is in contact with only one server.
Both the client and server usually communicate via a computer network but sometimes they may
reside in the same system.

Characteristics of Client Server Computing

The salient points for client server computing are as follows:

 The client server computing works with a system of request and response. The client sends
a request to the server and the server responds with the desired information.
 The client and server should follow a common communication protocol so they can easily
interact with each other. All the communication protocols are available at the application
layer.
 A server can only accommodate a limited number of client requests at a time. So it uses a
system based to priority to respond to the requests.
 Denial of Service attacks hinders servers ability to respond to authentic client requests by
inundating it with false requests.
 An example of a client server computing system is a web server. It returns the web pages
to the clients that requested them.

The Client-server model is a distributed application structure that partitions task or workload
between the providers of a resource or service, called servers, and service requesters called clients.
In the client-server architecture, when the client computer sends a request for data to the server
through the internet, the server accepts the requested process and deliver the data packets requested
back to the client. Clients do not share any of their resources. Examples of Client-Server Model
are Email, World Wide Web, etc.
Advantages of Client-Server model:
 Centralized system with all data in a single place.
 Cost efficient as it requires less maintenance cost and Data recovery is possible.
 The capacity of the Client and Servers can be changed separately.

Disadvantages of Client-Server model:

 Clients are prone to viruses, Trojans and worms if present in the Server or uploaded into the
Server.
 Server are prone to Denial of Service (DOS) attacks.
 Data packets may be spoofed or modified during transmission.
 Phishing or capturing login credentials or other useful information of the user are common
and MITM(Man in the Middle) attacks are common.
Client/Server communication

Client/Server communication involves two components, namely a client and a server. They are
usually multiple clients in communication with a single server. The clients send requests to the
server and the server responds to the client requests.

There are three main methods to client/server communication.

Sockets
Sockets facilitate communication between two processes on the same machine or different
machines. They are used in a client/server framework and consist of the IP address and port
number. Many application protocols use sockets for data connection and data transfer between a
client and a server.

Socket communication is quite low-level as sockets only transfer an unstructured byte stream
across processes. The structure on the byte stream is imposed by the client and server applications.

A diagram that illustrates sockets is as follows −

Remote Procedure Calls

These are inter-process communication techniques that are used for client-server based
applications. A remote procedure call is also known as a subroutine call or a function call.
A client has a request that the RPC translates and sends to the server. This request may be a
procedure or a function call to a remote server. When the server receives the request, it sends the
required response back to the client.

A diagram that illustrates remote procedure calls is given as follows −

Pipes
These are interprocess communication methods that contain two end points. Data is entered from
one end of the pipe by a process and consumed from the other end by the other process.

The two different types of pipes are ordinary pipes and named pipes. Ordinary pipes only allow
one way communication. For two way communication, two pipes are required. Ordinary pipes
have a parent child relationship between the processes as the pipes can only be accessed by
processes that created or inherited them.

Named pipes are more powerful than ordinary pipes and allow two way communication. These
pipes exist even after the processes using them have terminated. They need to be explicitly deleted
when not required anymore.

A diagram that demonstrates pipes are given as follows −

The Internet- Basic Internet Protocols

World Wide Web

World Wide Web, which is also known as a Web, is a collection of websites or web pages stored
in web servers and connected to local computers through the internet. These websites contain text
pages, digital images, audios, videos, etc. Users can access the content of these sites from any part
of the world over the internet using their devices such as computers, laptops, cell phones, etc. The
WWW, along with internet, enables the retrieval and display of text and media to your device.

The building blocks of the Web are web pages which are formatted in HTML and connected by
links called "hypertext" or hyperlinks and accessed by HTTP. These links are electronic
connections that link related pieces of information so that users can access the desired information
quickly. Hypertext offers the advantage to select a word or phrase from text and thus to access
other pages that provide additional information related to that word or phrase.

A web page is given an online address called a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A particular
collection of web pages that belong to a specific URL is called a website,
e.g., www.facebook.com, www.google.com, etc. So, the World Wide Web is like a huge electronic
book whose pages are stored on multiple servers across the world.

Small websites store all of their WebPages on a single server, but big websites or organizations
place their WebPages on different servers in different countries so that when users of a country
search their site they could get the information quickly from the nearest server.

The web provides a communication platform for users to retrieve and exchange information over
the internet. Unlike a book, where we move from one page to another in a sequence, on World
Wide Web we follow a web of hypertext links to visit a web page and from that web page to move
to other web pages. You need a browser, which is installed on your computer, to access the Web.

Difference between World Wide Web and Internet:

Some people use the terms 'internet' and 'World Wide Web' interchangeably. They think they are
the same thing, but it is not so. Internet is entirely different from WWW. It is a worldwide network
of devices like computers, laptops, tablets, etc. It enables users to send emails to other users and
chat with them online. For example, when you send an email or chatting with someone online, you
are using the internet.
But, when you have opened a website like google.com for information, you are using the World
Wide Web; a network of servers over the internet. You request a webpage from your computer
using a browser, and the server renders that page to your browser. Your computer is called a client
who runs a program (web browser), and asks the other computer (server) for the information it
needs.

How the World Wide Web Works?

WWW is a collection of websites connected to the internet so that people can search and share
information.

The Web works as per the internet's basic client-server format as shown in the following image.
The servers store and transfer web pages or information to user's computers on the network when
requested by the users. A web server is a software program which serves the web pages requested
by web users using a browser. The computer of a user who requests documents from a server is
known as a client. Browser, which is installed on the user' computer, allows users to view the
retrieved documents.
All the websites are stored in web servers. Just as someone lives on rent in a house, a website
occupies a space in a server and remains stored in it. The server hosts the website whenever a user
requests its WebPages, and the website owner has to pay the hosting price for the same. There are
three main technologies involved in transferring information (web pages) from servers to clients
(computers of users). These technologies include Hypertext Markup Language (HTML),
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Web browsers.