Application Layer: 2-1

Application layer:

▪ Principles of network
applications
▪ Web and HTTP
Creating a network app
application
transport
write programs that: mobile network
network
data link

▪ run on (different) end systems

physical
national or global ISP

▪ communicate over network

▪ e.g., web server software
communicates with browser software
local or
no need to write software for regional ISP

network-core devices home network content

▪ network-core devices do not run user
application
transport
provider
network network datacenter
application
applications data link
physical
transport
network
network

▪ applications on end systems allows

data link
physical

for rapid app development, enterprise

propagation network

Application Layer: 2-2

Client-server paradigm
server: mobile network
▪ always-on host national or global ISP

▪ permanent IP address
▪ often in data centers, for scaling
clients: local or

▪ contact, communicate with server regional ISP

▪ may be intermittently connected home network content

provider
▪ may have dynamic IP addresses network datacenter
network

▪ do not communicate directly with

each other
▪ examples: HTTP, IMAP, FTP
enterprise
network

Application Layer: 2-3

Peer-peer architecture
▪ no always-on server mobile network
▪ arbitrary end systems directly national or global ISP

communicate
▪ peers request service from other
peers, provide service in return to
other peers local or
regional ISP
• self scalability – new peers bring new
service capacity, as well as new service home network content
demands provider
network datacenter

▪ peers are intermittently connected network

and change IP addresses

• complex management enterprise

▪ example: P2P file sharing network

Application Layer: 2-4

Web and HTTP
First, a quick review…
▪ web page consists of objects, each of which can be stored on
different Web servers
▪ object can be HTML file, JPEG image, Java applet, audio file,…
▪ web page consists of base HTML-file which includes several
referenced objects, each addressable by a URL, e.g.,
www.someschool.edu/someDept/pic.gif

host name path name

Application Layer: 2-5

HTTP overview
HTTP: hypertext transfer protocol
▪ Web’s application-layer protocol HT
▪ client/server model: PC running H
TP
que re
st
TTP
• client: browser that requests, Firefox browser res
pon
se
receives, (using HTTP protocol) and
“displays” Web objects e st
r equ
• server: Web server sends (using TP nse server running
HT po Apache Web
r es
HTTP protocol) objects in response HT
T P
server
to requests
iPhone running
Safari browser

Application Layer: 2-6

HTTP overview (continued)
HTTP uses TCP: HTTP is “stateless”
▪ client initiates TCP connection ▪ server maintains no
(creates socket) to server, port 80 information about past client
▪ server accepts TCP connection requests
from client aside
▪ HTTP messages (application-layer protocols that maintain “state”
protocol messages) exchanged are complex!
▪ past history (state) must be
between browser (HTTP client) and maintained
Web server (HTTP server) ▪ if server/client crashes, their views
▪ TCP connection closed of “state” may be inconsistent, must
be reconciled

Application Layer: 2-7

HTTP connections: two types
Non-persistent HTTP Persistent HTTP
1. TCP connection opened ▪TCP connection opened to
2. at most one object sent a server
over TCP connection ▪multiple objects can be
3. TCP connection closed sent over single TCP
connection between client,
downloading multiple and that server
objects required multiple ▪TCP connection closed
connections

Application Layer: 2-8

 Non-persistent HTTP: example
User enters URL: www.someSchool.edu/someDepartment/home.index
(containing text, references to 10 jpeg images)

1a. HTTP client initiates TCP

connection to HTTP server 1b. HTTP server at host
(process) at www.someSchool.edu on www.someSchool.edu waiting for TCP
port 80 connection at port 80 “accepts”
connection, notifying client
2. HTTP client sends HTTP
request message (containing
URL) into TCP connection 3. HTTP server receives request message,
socket. Message indicates forms response message containing
time that client wants object requested object, and sends message
someDepartment/home.index into its socket
Application Layer: 2-9
 Non-persistent HTTP: example (cont.)
User enters URL: www.someSchool.edu/someDepartment/home.index
(containing text, references to 10 jpeg images)

4. HTTP server closes TCP

5. HTTP client receives response connection.
message containing html file,
displays html. Parsing html file,
finds 10 referenced jpeg objects

6. Steps 1-5 repeated for

each of 10 jpeg objects
time

Application Layer: 2-10

Non-persistent HTTP: response time

RTT (definition): time for a small

packet to travel from client to initiate TCP
server and back connection
RTT
HTTP response time (per object):
▪ one RTT to initiate TCP connection request file
▪ one RTT for HTTP request and first few RTT time to
transmit
bytes of HTTP response to return file
file received
▪ obect/file transmission time

time time
Non-persistent HTTP response time = 2RTT+ file transmission time
Application Layer: 2-11
Persistent HTTP (HTTP 1.1)
Non-persistent HTTP issues: Persistent HTTP (HTTP1.1):
▪ requires 2 RTTs per object ▪ server leaves connection open after
▪ OS overhead for each TCP sending response
connection ▪ subsequent HTTP messages
▪ browsers often open multiple between same client/server sent
parallel TCP connections to over open connection
fetch referenced objects in ▪ client sends requests as soon as it
parallel encounters a referenced object
▪ as little as one RTT for all the
referenced objects (cutting
response time in half)
Application Layer: 2-12
 HTTP request message
▪ two types of HTTP messages: request, response
▪ HTTP request message:
• ASCII (human-readable format)
carriage return character
line-feed character
request line (GET, POST,
GET /index.html HTTP/1.1\r\n
HEAD commands) Host: www-net.cs.umass.edu\r\n
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X
10.15; rv:80.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/80.0 \r\n
header Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml\r\n
lines Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5\r\n
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate\r\n
Connection: keep-alive\r\n
\r\n
carriage return, line feed
at start of line indicates
end of header lines * Check out the online interactive exercises for more
examples: http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/kurose_ross/interactive/
Application Layer: 2-13
HTTP request message: general format
method sp URL sp version cr lf request
line
header field name value cr lf
header
~
~ ~
~ lines

header field name value cr lf

cr lf

~
~ entity body ~
~ body

Application Layer: 2-14

Other HTTP request messages
POST method: HEAD method:
▪ web page often includes form ▪ requests headers (only) that
input would be returned if specified
▪ user input sent from client to URL were requested with an
server in entity body of HTTP HTTP GET method.
POST request message
PUT method:
▪ uploads new file (object) to server
GET method (for sending data to server): ▪ completely replaces file that exists
▪ include user data in URL field of HTTP at specified URL with content in
GET request message (following a ‘?’): entity body of POST HTTP request
www.somesite.com/animalsearch?monkeys&banana
message

Application Layer: 2-15

HTTP response message
status line (protocol HTTP/1.1 200 OK
status code status phrase) Date: Tue, 08 Sep 2020 00:53:20 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.6 (CentOS)
OpenSSL/1.0.2k-fips PHP/7.4.9
mod_perl/2.0.11 Perl/v5.16.3
header Last-Modified: Tue, 01 Mar 2016 18:57:50 GMT
lines ETag: "a5b-52d015789ee9e"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 2651
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
\r\n
data, e.g., requested data data data data data ...
HTML file

* Check out the online interactive exercises for more examples: http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/kurose_ross/interactive/
Application Layer: 2-16
HTTP response status codes
▪ status code appears in 1st line in server-to-client response message.
▪ some sample codes:
200 OK
• request succeeded, requested object later in this message
301 Moved Permanently
• requested object moved, new location specified later in this message (in
Location: field)
400 Bad Request
• request msg not understood by server
404 Not Found
• requested document not found on this server
505 HTTP Version Not Supported
Application Layer: 2-17