The Static Internet

In the early days of the World Wide Web, all information served to the client's browser was static. In other words, the content for page A served to client 1 was exactly the same as the content for page A served to client 2. The web server did not dynamically generate any part of the site's contents but simply served requests for static HTML pages loaded from the web server's file system and sent to the requesting client. There was no interactivity between the user and the server. The browser requested information, and the server sent it.

Although the static Internet quickly evolved to include graphics and sounds, the Web was still static, with little interactivity and very little functionality beyond that provided by simple hyperlinking.

Figure 1.1 illustrates the user's request and the web server's corresponding response for static (HTML, for example) web content.

Static web content: request and delivery

Figure 1.1. Static web content: request and delivery

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