UNIT – V
THE APPLICATION LAYER
World Wide Web
The Web was first proposed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 at CERN†, theEuropean
Organization for Nuclear Research, to allow several researchers at differentlocations
throughout Europe to access each others’ researches.
The commercial Webstarted in 1990s.
The webpages,are distributed all over the world and related documents are linked together.
Today, the Web is used to provide electronic shopping and gaming.
Architecture of WWW
The WWW is a distributed client-server service, in which a client using a browser can
access a service using a server.
The service provided is distributed over many locations called sites.
A web page can be simple or composite. A simple web page has no links to other web pages;
a composite web page has one or more links to other web pages. Each web page is a file
with a name and address.
Fig: The web architecture.. [Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.
Forouzan]
The first transaction (request/response) retrieves a copy of the main document (file A),
which has references (pointers) to the second and third files.
When a copy of the main document is retrieved and browsed, the user can click on the
reference to the image to invoke the second transaction and retrieve a copy of the image
(file B).
If the user needs to see the contents of the referenced text file, she can click on its reference
(pointer) invoking the third transaction and retrieving a copy of file C.
Web Client (Browser)
A variety of vendors offer commercial browsers that interpret and display a web page, and
all of them use the same architecture.
Each browser has three parts: a controller, client protocols, and interpreters.
The controller receives input from the keyboard or the mouse and uses the client programs
to access the document.
After the document has been accessed, the controlleruses one of the interpreters to display
the document on the screen.
The client protocolcan be one of the protocols described later, such as HTTP or FTP.
The interpreter canbe HTML, Java, or JavaScript, depending on the type of document.
Some commercialbrowsers include Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, and Firefox.
Web Server
The web page is stored at the server. Each time a request arrives, the
correspondingdocument is sent to the client. To improve efficiency, servers normally store
requestedfiles in a cache in memory; memory is faster to access than a disk.
Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
A web page, as a file, needs to have a unique identifier to distinguish it from other web
pages.
URL is a standard for specifying any kind of information on the internet.
URL defines four things: protocol, host computer, port and path.
Protocol. It is the client-server program thatwe need to access the web page.
Example protocol is HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and FTP (File Transfer
Protocol).
Host. The host identifier can be the IP address of the server or the unique name given
to the server. IP addresses can be defined in dotted decimal notation.
Port. The port, a 16-bit integer, is normally predefined for the client-server application.
For example, if the HTTP protocol is used for accessing the web page, the well-known
port number is 80. However, if a different port is used, the number canbe explicitly given.
Path. The path identifies the location and the name of the file in the underlying operating
system.
The format of this identifier normally depends on the operatingsystem.
In UNIX, a path is a set of directory names followed by the file name,
all separated by a slash.
For example, /top/next/last/myfile is a path that uniquely defines a file named my file, stored
in the directory last, which itself ispart of the directory next, which itself is under the
directory top.
To combine these four pieces together, the uniform resource locator (URL) is used. It uses
three different separators between the four pieces.
Web Documents
The documents in the WWW can be grouped into three broad categories: static,
dynamic,and active.
Static Documents
Static documents are fixed-content documents that are created and stored in a server.
The client can get a copy of the document only.
The contents inthe server can be changed, but the user cannot change them.
When a client accesses thedocument, a copy of the document is sent. The user can then use
a browser to see thedocument.
Static documents are prepared using one of several languages: HyperTextMarkup Language
(HTML), Extensible Markup Language (XML), Extensible StyleLanguage (XSL), and
Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML).
Dynamic Documents
A dynamic document is created by a web server whenever a browser requests the
document.
When a request arrives, the web server runs an application program or a script thatcreates
the dynamic document.
The server returns the result of the program or script as aresponse to the browser that
requested the document. Because a fresh document is createdfor each request, the contents
of a dynamic document may vary from one request toanother.
A simple example of a dynamic document is the retrieval of the time anddate from a server.
Time and date are kinds of information that are dynamic in that theychange from moment to
moment. The client can ask the server to run a program such asthe date program in UNIX
and send the result of the program to the client.
Active Documents
For many applications, we need a program or a script to be run at the client site. These
arecalled active documents.
For example, if we want to run a program that createsanimated graphics on the screen or a
program that interacts with the user. The program definitely needs to be run at the client site
where the animation or interaction takes place.
When a browser requests an active document, the server sends a copy of the document ora
script.
The document is then run at the client (browser) site. One way to create an activedocument
is to use Java applets, a program written in Java on the server. It is compiledand ready to be
run. The document is in bytecode (binary) format.
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
The standard web transfer protocol is HTTP.
The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used to define how the clientserverprograms
can be written to get web pages from the Web.
An HTTP client sends arequest; an HTTP server returns a response. The server uses the port
number 80; the clientuses a temporary port number. HTTP uses the services of TCP, which
is a connection-oriented and reliable protocol.
Non persistent versus Persistent Connections
Non persistent Connections
In a nonpersistent connection, one TCP connection is made for each request/response.
The steps in this strategy:
1. The client opens a TCP connection and sends a request.
2. The server sends the response and closes the connection.
3. The client reads the data until it encounters an end-of-file marker; it then closes the
connection.
In this strategy, if a file contains links to N different pictures in different files (all located on
the same server), the connection must be opened and closed N 1 times.
The nonpersistent strategy imposes high overhead on the server because the server needs N
1 different buffers each time a connection is opened.
Figure shows an example of a nonpersistent connection.
The client needs to access a file that contains one link to an image. The text file and image
are located on the same server. Here we need two connections. For each connection, TCP
requires at least three handshake messages to establish the connection, but the request can
be sent with the third one.
Fig: Nonpersistent connection .. [Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz
A. Forouzan]
After the connection is established, the object can be transferred. After receiving an object,
another three handshake messages are needed to terminate the connection.
The client and server are involved in two connection establishments and two connection
terminations.
Persistent Connections
HTTP 1.1 make persistent connections .
In a persistent connection,the server keeps the connection open for more requests after
sending a response.
The server can close the connection at the request of a client or if a time-out has been
reached.
The sender usually sends the length of the data with each response.
There are some occasions ,when the sender does not know the length of the data. This
happens when a document is created dynamically or actively.
In these cases, the serverinforms the client that the length is not known and closes the
connection after sendingthe data so the client knows that the end of the data has been
reached.
Time andresources are saved using persistent connections. Only one set of buffers and
variablesneeds to be set for the connection at each site.
The round trip time for connection establishmentand connection termination is saved.
What is RTT?
RTT is the time it takes for a packet to travel from client to server and then back to
the client.
Figure (below) shows the example for persistent connections.
Here Only one connection establishment and connection termination is used, but the request
for the image is sent separately.
Fig: Persistent connection .. [Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.
Forouzan]
HTTP Messages
Two types: request , response
Message Formats
The HTTP protocol defines the format of the request and response messages, as shown in
Figure .
Each message is made of four sections. The first section in the request message is called
therequest line; the first section in the response message is called the status line.
Request Message
The first line in a request message is called a request line.
There are three fields in this line separated by one space and terminated by two characters
(carriage return and line feed).
The fields are called method, URL, and version.
The method field defines the request types.
The client uses the GET method to send a request. In this case, the body of the message is
empty. The HEAD method is used when the client needs only some information about the
web page from the server, such as the last time it was modified. It is used to test the validity
of a URL.
The response message in this case has only the header section; the body section is empty.
The PUT method is the inverse of the GET method; it allows the client to post a new web
page on the server (if permitted).
The POST method is like PUT method, but it is used to send some information to the server
to be added to the web page or to modify the web page.
The TRACE method is used for debugging; the client asks the server to echo back the
request to check whether the server is getting the requests.
The DELETE method allows the client to delete a web page on the server if the client has
permission to do so.
The CONNECT method was made as a reserve method; it may be used by proxy servers.
The OPTIONS method allows the client to ask about the properties of a web page from the
server.
The second field, URL defines the address and name of the corresponding web page. The
third field, gives the version of the protocol; the current version of HTTP is 1.1.
After the request line, we have request header lines.
Each header line sends additional information from the client to the server.
For example, the client can request that the document be sent in a special format. Each
header line has a header name, a colon, a space, and a header value
The value field defines the values associated with each header name.
The body can be present in a request message. It contains the comment to be
sent or the file to be published on the website when the method is PUT or
POST.
Response Message
A response message consists of a status line, header lines, a blank line, and sometimes a
body.
The first line in a response message is called the status line. There are three fields in this
line separated by spaces and terminated by a carriage return and line feed.
The first field defines the version of HTTP protocol, currently 1.1.
The status code field defines the status of the request. It consists of three digits.
The codes in the 100 range are only informational, the codes in the 200 range indicate a
successful request. The codes in the 300 range redirect the client to another URL, and the
codes in the 400 range indicate an error at the client site.
The codes in the 500 range indicate an error at the server site. The status phrase explains the
status code in text form.
After the status line, we can have zero or more response header lines.
Each headerline sends additional information from the server to the client. For
example, the sendercan send extra information about the document. Each header line has a
header name, acolon, a space, and a header value. The body contains the document to be
sent from the server to the client.
Domain Name System (DNS)
The DNS is a distributed database that resides on multiple machines on the internet. It
provide e-mail routing information.
The DNS protocol runs over UDP and uses port 53.
Figure (below) shows how TCP/IP uses a DNS client and a DNS server to map a name to an
address.
A user wants to use a file transfer client to access the corresponding file transfer server
running on a remote host. The user knows only the file transfer server name, such as
afilesource.com.
The TCP/IP suite needs the IP address of the file transfer server to make the connection.
The following six steps map the host name to an IP address:
1. The user passes the host name to the file transfer client.
2. The file transfer client passes the host name to the DNS client.
3. Each computer, after being booted, knows the address of one DNS server. The DNS client
sends a message to a DNS server with a query that gives the file transfer server name
using the known IP address of the DNS server.
4. The DNS server responds with the IP address of the desired file transfer server.
5. The DNS server passes the IP address to the file transfer client.
6. The file transfer client now uses the received IP address to access the file transfer server.
Domain Name Space
To have a hierarchical name space, a domain name space was designed.
In this design the names are defined in an inverted-tree structure with the root at the top.
The tree has 128 levels: level 0 (root) to level 127 (see Figure ).
Fig: DNS tree. [Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A. Forouzan]
Label
Each node in the tree has a label, which is a string with a maximum of 63 characters. The
root label is a null string (empty string).
Domain Name
Each node in the tree has a domain name. A full domain name is a sequence of labels
separated by dots (.). The domain names are always read from the node up to the root.
The last label is the label of the root (null). This means that a full domain name always ends
in a null label, which means the last character is a dot because the null string is nothing.
Fig: Domain names. [Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.
Forouzan]
If a label is terminated by a null string, it is called a fully qualified domain name (FQDN).
The name must end with a null label, but because null means nothing, the label ends with a
dot.
If a label is not terminated by a null string, it is called a partially qualified domain name
(PQDN). A PQDN starts from a node, but it does not reach the root. It is used when the
name to be resolved belongs to the same site as the client.
Here the resolver can supply the missing part, called the suffix, to create an FQDN.
Domain
A domain is a subtree of the domain name space. The name of the domain is the name of
the node at the top of the subtree. Figure (below) shows some domains. A domain is divided
into domains.
Distribution of Name Space
The information contained in the domain name space must be stored.
It is inefficient and not reliable to have just one computer store such a huge amount of
information. It is inefficient because responding to requests from all over the world places a
heavy load on the system.
Hierarchy of Name Servers
To distribute the information among many computers called DNS servers. One way to do
this is to divide the whole space into many domains based on the first level.
DNS allows domains to be divided further into smaller domains (subdomains). Each server
can be responsible (authoritative) for either a large or small domain.
Fig: Domain name hierarchy. [Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.
Forouzan]
Zone
If a server accepts responsibility for a domain and does not divide the domain into
smallerdomains, the “domain” and the “zone” refer to the same thing. The server makes a
databasecalled a zone file and keeps all the information for every node under that domain.
Fig: Zone [Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A. Forouzan]
The information about the nodes in the subdomains is stored in the servers at the lower
levels, withthe original server keeping some sort of reference to these lower-level servers.
Root Server
If zone consists of the full tree then that zone server is called root server.
A root server does not store any information about domains .
A primary server is a server that stores a file about the zone for which it is an authority. It is
responsible for creating, maintaining, and updating the zone file.
A secondary server is a server that loads all information from the primary server. Secondary
server cannot perform any operation on zone file.
DNS in the Internet
In the Internet, the domain name space (tree) was divided into three sections: generic
domains, country domains, and the inverse domains.
Generic Domains
The generic domains define registered hosts according to their generic behavior. Each node
in the tree defines a domain, which is an index to the domain name space database.
Fig: Generic domain [Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.
Forouzan]
Looking at the tree, the first level in the generic domains section allows 14 possible labels.
Country Domains
The country domains section uses two-character country abbreviations (e.g., us for United
States). Second labels can be organizational, or they can be more specific national
designations.
Examplefor the country domains section.
The address uci.ca.us. can be translated to University of California, Irvine, in the state of
California in the United States.
Fig: Country domain [Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.
Forouzan]
Inverse domain
Inverse domain is used to find the name of a host when given the IP address.
Resolution
Mapping a name to an address is called name-address resolution.
DNS is designed as a client-server application. A host that needs to map an address to a
name or a name to an address calls a DNS client called a resolver.
The resolver accesses the closest DNS server with a mapping request. If the server has the
information, it satisfies the resolver; otherwise, it either refers the resolver to other servers
or asks other servers to provide the information.
Recursive Resolution
A client request complete translation.
If the server is authority for the domain name, it checks its database and responds. If
the server is not authority, it sends the request to another server and waits for the
response.
When the query is resolved ,the response travel back until it finally reaches the requesting
client. This is called recursive resolution.
DNS Messages
To get information about hosts, DNS uses two types of messages: query and response.
Both messages have the same format as shown in Figure .
Fig: DNS messages [Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.
Forouzan]
The identification field is used by the client to match the response with the query.
The flag field defines whether the message is a query or response. It also includes status of
error.
The next four fields in the header define the number of each record type in the message.
The question section consists of one or more question records. It is present in both query
and response messages.
The answer section consists of one or more resource records. It is present only in response
messages.
The authoritative section gives information (domain name) about one or more authoritative
servers for the query.
The additional information section provides additional information that may help the
resolver.
Encapsulation
DNS can use either UDP or TCP. The port used by the server is port 53.
UDP is used when the size of the response message is less than 512 bytes because most
UDP packages have a 512-byte packet size limit.
If the size of the response message is more than 512 bytes, a TCP connection is used.
Security of DNS
Applications such as Web access or e-mail are dependent on the proper operation of DNS.
DNS can be attacked in several ways :
1. The attacker may read the response of a DNS server to find the nature or names of sites
the user mostly accesses. This type of information can be used to find the user’s profile. To
prevent this attack, DNS messages need to be confidential .
ELECTRONIC MAIL
Electronic mail (or e-mail) allows users to exchange messages. Electronic mail is used for
sending a single message like text, voice,video or grapics to one or more recipients.
Email is fast,easy to distribute and inexpensive.
The sender and receiver use three different agents: a user agent (UA), a message transfer
agent(MTA), and a message access agent (MAA).
The mail server uses a queue (spool) to store messages waiting to be sent. The message,
needs to be sent through the Internet from client to server site using an MTA.
Here two message transfer agents are needed: one client and one server.
User Agent
The first component of an electronic mail system is the user agent (UA).
It provides service to the user to make the process of sending and receiving a message
easier.
A user agent is a software package (program) that composes, reads, replies to, and forwards
messages. It also handles local mailboxes on the user computers.
There are two types of user agents: command-driven and GUI-based.
A command-driven user agent normally accepts a one character command from the
keyboard to perform its task.
Sending Mail
To send mail, the user, through the UA, creates mail that looks very similar to postalmail. It
has an envelope and a message
The message contains the header and the body. The header of the message defines the
sender, the receiver, the subject of the message, and some other information. The body of
the message contains the actual information to be read by the recipient.
Receiving Mail
The user agent is triggered by the user (or a timer). If a user has mail, the UA informs the
user with a notice. If the user is ready to read the mail, a list is displayed in which each line
contains a summary of the information about a particular message in the mailbox..
Addresses
To deliver mail, a mail handling system must use an addressing system with unique
addresses.
In the Internet, the address consists of two parts: a local part and a domain name, separated
by an @ sign.
SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) act as message transfer agent.
Commands and Responses
SMTP uses commands and responses to transfer messages between an MTA client and an
MTA server. The command is from an MTA client to an MTA server; the response is from
an MTA server to the MTA client.
Commands
Commands are sent from the client to the server. Keyword:
argument(s)
SMTP defines 14 commands.
Responses
Responses are sent from the server to the client. A response is a three digit code that may be
followed by additional textual information.
Mail Transfer Phases
The process of transferring a mail message occurs in three phases: connection
establishment, mail transfer, and connection termination.
Connection Establishment After a client has made a TCP connection to the well known
port 25, the SMTP server starts the connection phase. This phase involves the following
three steps:
1. The server sends code 220 (service ready) to tell the client that it is ready to receive
mail. If the server is not ready, it sends code 421 (service not available).
2. The client sends the HELO message to identify itself, using its domain name address.
This step is necessary to inform the server of the domain name of the client.
3. The server responds with code 250 (request command completed) or some other code
depending on the situation.
Message Transfer After connection has been established between the SMTP client and
server, a single message between a sender and one or more recipients can be exchanged.
This phase involves eight steps. Steps 3 and 4 are repeated if there is more than one
recipient.
1. The client sends the MAIL FROM message to introduce the sender of the message. It
includes the mail address of the sender (mailbox and the domain name). This step is
needed to give the server the return mail address for returning errors and reporting
messages.
2. The server responds with code 250 or some other appropriate code.
3. The client sends the RCPT TO (recipient) message, which includes the mail addressof the
recipient.
4. The server responds with code 250 or some other appropriate code.
5. The client sends the DATA message to initialize the message transfer.
6. The server responds with code 354 (start mail input) or some other appropriatemessage.
7. The client sends the contents of the message in consecutive lines. Each line is
terminatedby a two-character end-of-line token (carriage return and line feed).
Themessage is terminated by a line containing just one period.
8. The server responds with code 250 (OK) .
Connection Termination After the message is transferred successfully, the client terminates
the connection.
Two steps.
.
1. The client sends the QUIT command.
2. The server responds with code 221 or some other appropriate code.
POP3 (Post Office Protocol, version 3)
Post Office Protocol, version 3 (POP3) is simple in its function.
The client POP3 software is installed on the recipient computer; the server POP3 software is
installed on the mail server.
Mail access starts with the client when the user needs to download its e-mail from the
mailbox on the mail server. The client opens a connection to the server on TCP port 110.
It then sends its user name and password to access the mailbox. The user can then list and
retrieve the mail messages, one by one.
Figure (below) shows an example of downloading using POP3.
POP3 has two modes: the delete mode and the keep mode.
In the delete mode, the mail is deleted from the mailbox after each retrieval. In the keep
mode, the mail remains in the mailbox after retrieval.
The delete mode is normally used when the user is working at her permanent computer and
can save and organize the received mail after reading or replying.
The keep mode is normally used when the user accesses her mail away from her primary
computer (for example, from a laptop).
Fig: POP3 format. [Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A. Forouzan]
POP3 has some drawbacks.
It does not allow the user to organize her mail on the server; the user cannot have different
folders on the server. In addition, POP3 does not allow the user to partially check the
contents of the mail before downloading.
IMAP4
IMAP4 isInternet Mail Access Protocol, version 4 (IMAP4).
IMAP4 is similar to POP3, but it has more features; IMAP4 is more powerful and more
complex.
IMAP4 provides the following extra functions:
A user can check the e-mail header prior to downloading.
A user can search the contents of the e-mail for a specific string of characters prior to
downloading.
A user can partially download e-mail.
This is very useful if bandwidth is limited and the e-mail contains multimedia with high
bandwidth requirements.
A user can create, delete, or rename mailboxes on the mail server.
A user can create a hierarchy of mailboxes in a folder for e-mail storage.
MIME
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is a supplementary protocol that allows
non-ASCII data to be sent through e-mail.
MIME transforms non-ASCII data at the sender site to NVT ASCII data and delivers it to
the client MTA to be sent through the Internet.
The message at the receiving site is transformed back to the original data.
MIME means a set of software functions that transforms non-ASCII data
to ASCII data .
Fig: MIME. [Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A. Forouzan]
MIME Headers
MIME defines five headers, as shown in Figure , which can be added to the original e-mail
header section to define the transformation parameters:
Fig: MIME header. [Source : Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz A.
Forouzan]
MIME-Version The current version is 1.1.
Content-Type This header defines the type of data used in the body of the message. The
content type and the content subtype are separated by a slash. Depending on the subtype,
the header may contain other parameters.
MIME allows seven different types of data,
Content-Transfer-Encoding This header defines the method used to encode the messages
into 0s and 1s for transport.
The five types of encoding methods are shown in Table.
In the Base 64 encoding, data, as a string of bits, is first divided into 6-bit chunks.
Each 6-bit section is then converted into an ASCII character.
