What Happens When You Type google.com In Your Browser And Press Enter

Introduction

A web page known as a website is a text file formatted in a particular way so that your browser (such as Chrome, bing, etc) can understand it; this format is called Hypertext Markup Language and is short-named HTML.

These files are located in computers that provide the service of storing files or different files and waiting for someone who needs them to deliver them. These computers that host those web pages are called servers because they serve the content that they hold to whoever needs it.

These servers can vary in classes, the most common and the one that we’ll be talking about in the main portion of this article is a web server, the one that serves web pages. We can also find application servers, which are the ones that hold an application base code that will then be used to interact with a web browser or other applications. Database servers are also out there, which are the ones that hold a database that can be updated and consulted when needed.

Another concept that is important to know is Transmission Control Protocol (T.C.P) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP). Each one determines the way the content of a server is served or delivered.

T.C.P. is usually used to deliver static websites such as Wikipedia or Google and also email services and to download files to your computer because T.C.P. makes sure that all the content that is needed gets delivered.

It accomplishes this by sending the file in small packets of data and along with each packet a confirmation to know that the packet was delivered; that’s why if you are ever downloading something and your internet connection suddenly drops when it comes back up you don’t have to start over because the server would know exactly how many packets you have and how many you still need to receive.

The downside to T.C.P. is that because it has to confirm whether you got the packet or not before sending the next, it tends to be slower. U.D.P. on the other hand is usually used to serve live videos or online games. This is because U.D.P. is a lot faster than T.C.P. since U.D.P. does not check if the information was received or not; it is not important. The only thing U.D.P. cares about is sending the information. That is the reason why if you’ve ever watched a live video and if either your internet connection or the host’s drops, you would just stop seeing the content; and when the connection comes back up you will only see the current stream of the broadcast and what was missed is forever lost. This is also true for online video games (if you’ve played them you know exactly what this means)

The first place your operating system is going to check for the address of the URL you specified is in the host’s file (/etc/hosts in Linux and Mac, c \windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts in Windows). If the URL is not found inside this file, then the OS will make a DNS request to find the IP Address of the web page. The first step is to ask the Resolver (or Internet Service Provider) server to look up in its cache to see if it knows the IP Address, if the Resolver does not know then it asks the root server to ask the.COM TLD (Top Level Domain) server — if your URL ends in .net then the TLD server would be .NET and so on — the TLD server will again check in its cache to see if the requested IP Address is there. If not, then it will have at least one of the authoritative name servers associated with that URL, and after going to the Name Server, it will return the IP Address associated with your URL. All this was done in milliseconds

After the OS has the IP Address and gives it to the browser, it then makes a GET (a type of HTTP Method) to say IP Address. When the request is made the browser again requests the OS which then, in turn, packs the request in the TCP traffic protocol we discussed earlier, and it is sent to the IP Address. On its way, it is checked by both the OS and the server’s firewall to make sure that there are no security violations. And upon receiving the request the server, usually a load-balancer that directs traffic to all available servers for that website, sends a response with the IP Address of the chosen server along with the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate to initiate a secure session (HTTPS). Finally, the chosen server then sends the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files (If any) back to the OS who in turn gives it to the browser to interpret it. And then you get your website as you know it.

Conclusion

In our modern society when everything is online, it is amazing to know the complexity that takes place for us to be able to get to a website. It is done so fast that very few would even begin to fathom the amazing process that takes place.

Thank you.

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