Chapter 14. Hypertext Transfer Protocol

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) protocol is a significantly young protocol. Its origin dates back to the year 1990. Its predecessor was the Gopher protocol (today nearly forgotten). The other turning point is HTTP protocol version 0.9, which has many implementations. The new version 1.1 (RFC 2616) is more complicated.

Usage

HTTP protocol serves for information searching on the Internet (or intranet).

Security

HTTP itself supports many authentication methods (such as username and password, Kerberos, etc.). Netscape introduced securing communication by means of HTTP Secure Socket Layer (SSL). SSL became the base for the Internet standard Transport Layer Security (TLS). SSL/TLS is based on PKI with ITU-T ...

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