Have you ever wondered what happens behind the screen when you enter a URL into your browser? Well, I was just as curious a few days ago and decided to look it up. Here’s a quick summary of what I found.
Step 1 — When a URL is typed into a browser, the browser searches locally for the domain name IP address in the Domain Name System (DNS). The search is done as follows:
- First, the browser cache is searched.
- Then the Operating System (OS) cache is checked.
- Then the router cache is checked.
- Lastly, the Internet Service Provider(ISP) cache is searched.
Step 2 — After the browser has received the domain name IP address, it connects to the server using TCP protocol.
Step 3 — Then, the browser sends an HTTP request to the server.
Step 4 — The server sends an HTTP response back to the browser.
Step 5 — The browser renders the response eg HTML.
Step 6 — The browser then sends subsequent requests as needed to the server to get the embedded links, javascript, images in the HTML and then repeats steps 3 to 5.
This is all there is to it.
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Top comments (2)
Thank you!