Application Layer Protocols, Computer Networking

 Principles of

Application Layer Protocols

Network applications are the raisons d'etre of a computer network. If we couldn't conceive of any useful applications, there wouldn't be any need to design networking protocols to support them. But over the past thirty years, many people have devised numerous ingenious and wonderful networking applications. These applications include the classic text-based applications that became popular in the 1980s, including remote access to computers, electronic mail, file transfers, newsgroups, and chat. But they also include more recently conceived multimedia applications, such as the World Wide Web, Internet telephony, video conferencing, and audio and video on demand.

Although network applications are diverse and have many interacting components, software is almost

always at their core. Recall from Section 1.2 that for a network application's software is distributed among two or more end systems (i.e., host computers). For example, with the Web there are two pieces of software that communicate with each other: the browser software in the user's host (PC, Mac or workstation), and the Web server software in the Web server. With Telnet, there are again two pieces of software in two hosts: software in the local host and software in the remote host. With multiparty video conferencing, there is a software piece in each host that participates in the conference.

In the jargon of operating systems, it is not actually software pieces (i.e., programs) that are

communicating but in truth processes that are communicating. A process can be thought of as a program that is running within an end system. When communicating processes are running on the same end system, they communicate with each other using interprocess communication. The rules for interprocess communication are governed by the end system's operating system. But in this book we are not interested in how processes on the same host communicate, but instead in how processes running on different end systems (with potentially different operating systems) communicate. Processes on two different end systems communicate with each other by exchanging messages across the computer network. A sending process creates and sends messages into the network; a receiving process receives these messages and possibly responds by sending messages back. Networking applications have application-layer protocols that define the format and order of the messages exchanged between processes, as well as the actions taken on the transmission or receipt of a message.

The application layer is a particularly good place to start our study of protocols. It's familiar ground.

We're acquainted with many of the applications that rely on the protocols we will study. It will give us a good feel for what protocols are all about, and will introduce us to many of the same issues that we'll see again when we study transport, network, and data link layer protocols.

The World Wide Web: HTTP, Application Layer

 The World Wide Web: HTTP

In the 1980s the Internet was used by researchers, academics and university students to login to remote hosts, to transfer files from local hosts to remote hosts and vice versa, to receive and send news, and to receive and send electronic mail. Although these applications were (and continue to be) extremely useful, the Internet was essentially unknown outside the academic and research  communities. Then in early 1990s the Internet's killer application arrived on the scene -- the World Wide Web. The Web is the Internet application that caught the general public's eye. It is dramatically changing how people interact inside and outside their work environments. It has spawned thousands

of start up companies. It has elevated the Internet from just one of many data networks (including online networks such as Prodigy, America On Line and Compuserve, national data networks such as Minitel/Transpac in France, and private X.25 and frame relay networks) to essentially the one and only data network. History is sprinkled with the arrival of electronic communication technologies that have had major societal impacts. The first such technology was the telephone, invented in the 1870s. The telephone allowed two persons to orally communicate in real-time without being in the same physical location. It had a major impact on society -- both good and bad. The next electronic communication technology was broadcast radio/television, which arrived in the 1920s and 1930s. Broadcast radio/television allowed people to receive vast quantities of audio and video information. It also had a major impact on society -- both good and bad. The third major communication technology that has changed the way people live and work is the Web. Perhaps what appeals the most to users about the Web is that it is on demand. Users receive what they want, when they want it. This is unlike broadcast radio and television, which force users to "tune in" when the content provider makes the content available. In addition to being on demand, the Web has many other wonderful features that people love and cherish. It is enormously easy for any individual to make any available available over the Web; everyone can become a publisher at extremely low cost. Hyperlinks and search engines help us navigate through an ocean of Web sites. Graphics and animated graphics stimulate our senses. Forms, Java applets, Active X components, as well as many other devices enable us to interact with pages and sites. And more and more, the Web provides a menu interface to vast quantities of audio and video material stored in the Internet, audio and video that can be accessed on demand.