Computer Networks Practical #5
Computer Networks
Practical Exercises #5
These practical exercises accompany
Tutorial #5.
- Recall the very first practical
exercise - that of GETting a Web page using HTTP 0.9. Repeat
the exercise using HTTP 1.0, as shown in slide 2 of the
lecture.
When you've succeeded at that, try adding some extra
GET request method headers, such as those given in
slide 4 of the lecture.
What happens when you make up some headers of your own?
- Repeat the previous exercise for various different HTTP 1.0
servers, this time simply requesting "/", which is
almost always mapped to a valid Web page. Looking at the
"Server: " header, what HTTP server software is most common?
- Repeat either or both of the previous exercises, except this time
using the HEAD request method, instead of the
GET request method. What happens? What happens if
you request a document without a <head>....</head>
markup, such as some of the old (1996) C205 lecture notes on
ironbark?
- Examine the RFC for HTTP 1.0 (RFC
1945) and investigate the meanings of the various 3 digit
codes for this protocol.
- If you're already proficient at HTML, have a look at the
W3C standards for
HTML 3.2
If you're not, perhaps a more gentle
introduction might be appropriate... Write some HTML pages
for fun! Can you envisage a future where word processors as
we know them are obsolete, and everything will be written
in HTML, or something like it? Why or why not?
Phil Scott