January 1997

HTTP/1.1 standardized

RFC 2068 defined HTTPHyperText Transfer Protocol — the protocol browsers use to request and receive web pages./1.1 in January 1997 — adding persistent connections, chunked transfer, and better caching than HTTPHyperText Transfer Protocol — the protocol browsers use to request and receive web pages./1.0.

What it was for

HTTPHTTPHyperText Transfer Protocol — the protocol browsers use to request and receive web pages./1.1 is how browsers and APIs talk to servers — GET/POST requests, status codes, headers. Persistent connections cut latency; virtual hosts let one IPInternet Protocol — the addressing and routing layer that moves packets across networks. serve many domains. Every RESTRepresentational State Transfer — a style for web APIs using HTTP methods and resource URLs. APIApplication programming interface — a defined way for programs to talk to each other or to a service., CDN, and `fetch()` call still rides on HTTPHyperText Transfer Protocol — the protocol browsers use to request and receive web pages. semantics defined here and refined in later RFCs.

Companies

  • IETF

Why it's here

HTTPHyperText Transfer Protocol — the protocol browsers use to request and receive web pages./1.1 fixed the performance and proxy problems that limited HTTPHyperText Transfer Protocol — the protocol browsers use to request and receive web pages./1.0 at web scale.

Why it mattered

It became the wire protocol underpinning the web, APIs, and eventually HTTPHyperText Transfer Protocol — the protocol browsers use to request and receive web pages./2 and HTTPHyperText Transfer Protocol — the protocol browsers use to request and receive web pages./3.

What it solved

HTTPHyperText Transfer Protocol — the protocol browsers use to request and receive web pages./1.0 opened a new TCPTransmission Control Protocol — a reliable, connection-oriented protocol used on the internet. connection per request and handled caching inconsistently.

Media

  • HTTP
    ImageHTTP

    IETF HTTP Working Group (HTTPbis), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Related