let's talk about browsers and servers this video will teach you about their purpose and how they contribute to the giant network that we know as the internet what happens when you request a website in your browser well every time you type a web address and press enter a series of things happen in the few seconds it takes for the website to appear on your screen over recent decades there have been many web browsers some of the most popular today are chrome firefox safari internet explorer and opera all of these browsers serve the same basic purpose to display websites for you to read and interact with but just how do they do this first the browser takes the web address you provided and sends a request to a server across the internet for the files that make up the website the contacted server is dedicated to holding the website's files it may even be thousands of miles away from you and your device once the server receives the request it contains logic for processing the request and identifying the files and data that the client has specified it responds to the browser's request with the necessary files this is a process that allows the browser to display website files to you and it happens in the few seconds it takes for websites to load on your device screen you may be asking yourself what is a server a server is a specialized computer connected to a network the role of this computer is to listen for requests from network devices and send back data servers provide or serve up resources like website files data and assets like images or videos along with other cool things servers are not like the computers you may be used to they are focused on data storage and retrieval so they have no monitors or keyboards a server will need lots of computing power to serve up websites that reach thousands or even millions of users next we need to understand how the browsers and servers understand each other the internet follows protocols or rules that govern the format of data sent over the internet or other networks browsers and servers communicate with one another using the internet protocol known as http you've seen this before http or hypertext transfer protocol allows for data transfer when you see the s at the end of http the data is being transferred securely an important part of the hypertext transfer protocol is that each request has a request method that specifies the type of request being made for example if the user is just asking to fetch a resource this is specified as a get request if a user is sending data to the server for example such as submitting information via form this is specified as a post request when the server sends back a response it sends a status code that accompanies the requested resource you might be familiar with scene 404 error messages when browsing the internet this is an http response code that indicates that the requested content wasn't found http provides reliable structure to the interplay between the client and the server let's review what we learned today there are three important things to remember one the browser sends requests to the server and displays or renders website files two the server stores website files and sends them to the web browser upon request three http or hypertext transfer protocol is a standardized set of rules for how browsers and servers transfer data to one another