HTTP

Marc Andreessen
Inventor of the
Netscape web browser

‘http’ stands for hyper text transfer protocol. It is  a set of rules governing the transfer of information on the world wide web. This information can be in the from of text, graphic images, sound, video, and other multimedia files. http defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what action web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. Any web server machine contains, in addition to the web pages files it can serve, a program that is designed to wait for http requests, and handle them when they arrive. For example, a web browser initiates a request to a server, and the server sends a response has been completed, either the browser or the server may terminate the connection, or the browser can send another request. To put it a nutshell, http is a protocol or set of rules that acts as the go-between for internet users.

Internet society

The internet society was founded in 1992, and has offices in Washington and Geneva, its purpose is to provide information and education about the internet, and  to maintain certain standards on the internet.