Computer Networks Practical #5

Computer Networks

Practical Exercises #5

These practical exercises accompany Tutorial #5.
  1. 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?

  2. 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?

  3. 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?

  4. Examine the RFC for HTTP 1.0 (RFC 1945) and investigate the meanings of the various 3 digit codes for this protocol.

  5. 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