HTTP allows information to be transmitted via the World Wide Web. HTTP requests can obtain music, video, text and image files.

What does HTTP mean?

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is the protocol necessary to exchange hypertext. Hypertext uses logical links called hyperlinks to link between different nodes on the internet. A client such as an internet browser makes a HTTP request to a server. The server seeks to respond to this request by providing the requested file. The completed response contains details about the responses success/failure and response time. The use of HTTP is dependent on a reliable TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) or Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) are used to locate HTTP resources. Sir Tim Berners-Lee and his team are credited with the development of HTTP. In 2009 he was employed by Gordon Brown to open up all government data acquired for official purposes for free re-use. The data.gov.uk site now contains over 24221 datasets.