KB 222

What are servers?

Article:222
Created:2003-04-30 10:40:11
Categories:
  General Concepts

Question or Symptom

I've heard the term web server, mail server, etc. on the Internet. What is a server?

Resolution

The internet works by pairs of machines talking to one another to receive information. The requesting machine is called the client, the machine supplying the information is called the server. Servers and clients speak an agreed upon language for the particular information they're tranferring. For example, mail servers/clients speak SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Web servers and browsers speak HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol). These protocols are spoken over a TCP/IP connection.

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 KB 221 What is TCP/IP?