Mary's NET11 Blog

Every Saturday I'll give my weekly reflections on my study of NET11.



After reading the recommended links 'The Basic Process' and 'The Internet' on HowStuffWorks.com I couldn't help but compare some of the Internet protocols to my part-time work as a waitress at a restaurant. I'll draw a little cartoon to explain.



A waitress acts like our web browser.

So the waitress is the web browser, being the 'middle-man' for the customer, and from the customers point of view, that is all they want, 2 simple steps -

1) order the food (type in the URL)

2) receive the food (view the web page)

However once the waitress or browser has the order/page request, the part of the process that the customer doesn't see happens.

• The waitress assigns table number and order to customer (The URL is sent to a name server to turn the basic name into an IP address.)

• Once the table number and order are assigned, the order can be put through to the kitchen. (The browser connects to the server at that IP address.)

• The kitchen receives the order, and starts cooking the requested food on the order. (The browser follows the HTTP protocol to send a GET request to the server, asking for the specific file.)

• The kitchen sends the food out, ready to serve. (The server sends the HTML text for the web page to the browser.)

• Waitress checks for table number and delivers food to the table. (The browser reads the HTML tags and shows the page on your screen.) ¹
  

- Mary

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Reference List

In the above bulleted list, the Internet information is referenced from -
1 Brain, M. Behind the Scenes: How Web Servers Work, Retrieved March 3, 2007, from the How Stuff Works Websitehttp://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-server2.htm

Labels: Module 1, Reflections