HTTP

HTTP, or HyperText Transfer Protocol is the most common web protocol. It is unencrypted and stateless, meaning each request is handled independently of each other. Request a page and an image on the page are 2 separate requests. For sites that require a login to access a page, this is managed by cookies.

While web browsers are commonly used for retrieving pages, this isn’t a requirement. A telnet client could also request these (or curl). HTTP servers are normally hosted on port 80, but don’t have to be.

HTTP Methods (Verb)

An HTTP method is the action type requested on communication to a server. These are called methods or verbs. The most common are:

GET
POST
PUT
DELETE

Request process

The easiest verb to show is a get request. To do this over telnet

Telnet [serverIP] 80
Get / HTTP/1.1
host: telnet
press enter a couple of times

In the first line, we are simply creating a TCP handshake to the server on port 80.
In the second line, we are getting the “/” file, normally index.html, and providing a protocol to use
In the last line, we need to tell the server our host, this could really be anything but must be provided.

If this all goes well, you will receive the page code to your terminal. Simple.

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