what is web server? how it works ?

What's a Web Server?

It's a server used to communicate with Web Browsers as its clients and the communication protocol used in this case is HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). This is why a Web Server is also called an HTTP Server.

Before moving on to discussing how a typical Web Server works, it's better to understand what exactly the HTTP is all about? If you don't know it already then you may like to go through this article.

How does a Web Server work?

As is the case with any client-server comunication, in this case also the client (i.e., the Web Browser) and the server (i.e., HTTP/Web Server) should be able to communicate with each other in a defined way. This pre-defined set of rules which form the basis of the communication are normally termed as a protocol and in this case the underlying protocol will be HTTP.

Irrespective of how the client or the server has been implemented, there will always be a way to form a valid HTTP Request for the client to work and similarly the server needs to be capable of understanding the HTTP Requests sent to it and form valid HTTP Responses to all the arrived HTTP Requests. Both the client and the server machines should also be equipped with the capability of establishing the connection to each other (in this case it'll be a TCP reliable connection) to be able to transfer the HTTP Requests (client -> server) and HTTP Responses (server -> client).