Client-Server Relations
What is a client-server relationship?
A client-server relationship describes how a server can provide resources or services to one or more clients.
The Client:
The client is the service requester. Whenever a client needs some type of information, for example web resources, or data, the client will make a request to the server. The client can be a laptop, phone, tablet, computer, etc. When the client requests a service/resource, it only has to understand what gets returned back to the client. What that means is the client does not need to know how the request is a processed/approved, it just needs to know what gets back.
The Server:
The server is the service provider. What this means is when the server gets the request from the client, it will provide the necessary response to that request and return it to the client. The server can contain web resources, host web applications, or store data. The server contains these things because the client might request one or more of these things, so the server must be able to handle that request. A server can only handle so many clients, so in order to handle this problem distributed computing comes in. Distributed computing is when clients are distributed over multiple servers. This is better than a non-distributed model because there is not a single point of failure. If a server goes down on a non-distributed model, then the whole thing fails. This would not happen if a distributed model is used. Server examples are web servers that handle HTTP request and database servers that run DMS(Digital Media Server).
This is what the client-server relationship looks like.
Examples:
Examples of a client-server relationship would be a delivery of a web page, online games like Fortnite, or username/password login application, like email. When delivering a web page, the browser would request the web page from the server, then the server would respond to that request and give it back to the client, and the web page would be delivered and loaded. Online games that involve playing would other people would be considered a client-server relationship because when logging on to the game, it’s requesting access to the game’s server in order to play with other people. A username/password login would request access with the username and password and the server would grant it based on if the username and password are correct. These are just a few examples of a client-server relationship.
Other Type:
A different type of relationship is a peer-to-peer network AKA P2P. A P2P network is when several clients act as the client and server and share resources between each other. This is what a peer-to-peer network would look like.