HTTP is an application-layer protocol for transmitting hypermedia documents, such as HTML. It was designed for communication between web browsers and web servers, but it can also be used for other purposes, such as machine-to-machine communication, programmatic access to APIs, and more.
HTTP is designed to permit intermediate network elements to improve or enable communications between clients and servers. High-traffic websites often benefit from web cache servers that deliver content on behalf of upstream servers to improve response time.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the foundation of the World Wide Web, and is used to load web pages using hypertext links. Learn more about HTTP.
Basically, HTTP is an TCP/IP based communication protocol, which is used to deliver data (HTML files, image files, query results etc) on the World Wide Web. The default port is TCP 80, but other ports can be used. It provides a standardized way for computers to communicate with each other.
Now that both HTTP extensions and HTTP/1.1 are stable specifications (RFC2616 at that time), W3C has closed the HTTP Activity. An effort to revise HTTP/1.1 started in 2006, which led to the creation of the IETF httpbis Working Group. Work completed with the publication of RFC 723X (See below)
HTTP is the protocol behind nearly all communication on the web. A browser loading a page sends an HTTP request for the HTML document, parses the response, then sends additional requests for stylesheets, scripts, images, fonts, and other subresources.
A web page from Wikipedia displayed in Google Chrome The World Wide Web (also known as WWW, W3, or simply the Web) [2] is a public interconnected information system that enables content sharing over the Internet. [3] It facilitates access to documents and other web resources according to specific rules of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). [4] The Web was invented by English computer ...