What happens when you type

holbertonschool.com in your
browser and press Enter

In this technological era, it’s so common to search on

that special thing that is the internet. The internet is a
wide-area network (WAN) that permits you to
navigate into the world and it allows you to facilitate
your life through a different type of devices.
In the case of looking for a website on your browser
and let’s go into that specific page immediately, you
can think that this process has a so easily or short
work. But really is so easy than our devices show?
On this blog that answer will be solved. We will use
holbertonschool.com as our example to search.
All this process occurs on milliseconds, the speed of
process and network are the limits, but in the major
of time this is really fast, you can’t believe all the
process that occurs behind.
All begins on your browser, you type
holbertonschool.com, the purpose is to contact with a
server that store that website. A server is a computer
that has the ability to process requests and send data
to other computers that are called clients. To identify
that specific browser the internet, use an IP, that is an
Internet Protocol, that works like the addresses in the
houses to identify where you live. But that addresses
un most of the cases have an alias to facilitate the
search by humans like holbertonschool.com that
behind is an IP address.

Let’s begin the quest to found the server.

All begins with the cache, if you visited that website

before the cache of the OS (Operating System) or the
cache of the browser saved the IP address but in this
case we will take into account that the cache memory
doesn’t have saved the IP address of
holbertonschool.com so the next step is to contact to
the resolver.
The resolver server

This is usually your ISP (Internet Service Provider).

And again, the first step is to check if it has the IP
address in the cache memory if it doesn’t have it the
resolver will contact to the root.

The root server

If is not in the cache of the root server, this server

knows where to locate the .COM TLD server.
TLD (Top-Level Domain) that is the specific server that
we need because our website is derived from .COM
another type of TLDs include: .MX, .JP… for example
for countries and also the common TLDs as .COM.

Retaking, and we will be sent to that server because

there is stored information of the different domain
names (that refers to the alias of the IP addresses) but
if this server doesn’t have the address will send you
the authoritative name servers through the domain
registrar reserves and this communicate to the .COM
TLD server the authoritative name servers for the
domain name holbertonschool.com.
Authoritative name servers

These different servers can resolve any

domain managed by holbertonschool.com and then
return the IP address to the resolver in the last
instance then saved the IP and returned to the OS.
The OS will send the IP to the browser to be
displayed.

The browser

First of all the browser will save that IP and knowing

where to locate holbertonschool.com it will request
the content to the server. But this is governed by the
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol).

TCP – This protocol creates channels of

communication across a network and manage how
the information will be sent by packages of data and
reassembled at the destination.
IP – This protocol guides the packages through the
network.

To establish the connection through TCP/IP, TCP will

send a package to be returned as confirmation to the
server with the help of the IP with the purpose to
confirm the connection between the servers and
establish the connection.

Package Shipping

Now it will be sent a package through HTTP

(Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and will bump with the
load balancer that is a server that regulate the traffic
in the network to doesn’t overload the different
servers that the load balancer has access.

Security

Generally, the load balancers have a firewall

equipped. A firewall can be a software or a hardware
component that has the purpose to monitor incoming
and outgoing traffic also manage the ways that the
server allow the information to be received, either
allowing communication with a port, some type of
connection, content or with an IP address specifically
and can also prohibit access depending on the factors
previously said.

The holbertonschool.com domain name have

specified the communication with HTTPS (Hypertext
Transfer Protocol Secure) not HTTP so the
communication since the load balancer is by HTTPS,
to use HTTPS the load balancer must have an SSL
(Secure Socket Layer) certificate. This establish an
encrypted connection between the load balancer and
the browser via HTTPS and then depending of the
algorithm of the load balancer to manage the traffic
of the servers will send the package to the web server
that have the proper information of the website.

Web server

The purpose of the web server is to serve the content

of the website depending of the request.
Now in the web server depending of the content of
the website have or not the content directly such as
the example of HTML files in most of the cases the
code base that are static and can return it without
help of another software or server, but in the case of
dynamic content have to be converted to static to be
sent and have to contact to the application server
that at the same time is contacting to the database to
retrieve information to the web server such as user
information and the dynamic content then only have
to be sent the website to the client and be displayed.
I hope you understand all the trip that is search a
website through the internet.