what happens when you type https://www.google.com in your browser and press Enter
websites has become a crucial aspect of our daily lives in today’s linked world. Ever questioned what actually occurs when you enter a URL like “https://www.google.com" into your browser and press Enter? Using DNS requests, TCP/IP, firewalls, HTTPS/SSL, load balancers, web servers, application servers, and databases, we will set out on a trip to unravel the complex procedures involved in the process.
Domain Name System (DNS) Request: The journey starts with a DNS request. Your browser must convert the human-readable domain name, such as “https://www.google.com," into an IP address that the internet can recognize. For the IP address connected to “www.google.com," it makes a DNS request to a DNS resolver or the local DNS cache.
TCP/IP: The browser creates a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection as soon as it receives the IP address. Data is divided into packets and transmitted securely between the client (your browser) and the server (Google’s infrastructure) thanks to TCP.
Firewall: The TCP packets may now run into a firewall. In order to verify whether incoming and outgoing traffic satisfies certain requirements established by network administrators, firewalls serve as a security barrier. The packets move on to the following stage if they successfully navigate the firewall.
HTTPS/SSL :Modern websites use HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption to provide secure connection. To create a secure connection, the browser and web server shake hands. This entails exchanging encryption keys and confirming the server’s SSL/TLS certificate.
Load-Balancer: To divide incoming requests among several servers, big websites like Google frequently use load balancers. By uniformly distributing traffic, load balancers maximize resource utilization and increase reliability. To choose the best server for a given request, they consider server load, latency, and availability.
Web server: One of the web servers in charge of hosting the website receives the request from the load balancer. The HTTP request is received by and processed by web servers like Apache or Nginx. They either execute server-side scripts or retrieve the requested web page to produce the appropriate material to transmit back to the browser.
Web pages occasionally need dynamic content or server-side processing from the application server. These requests are handled by application servers built using Node.js, Ruby on Rails, or Java. They carry out business logic, interface with databases, run code, and produce dynamic web pages or API answers.
Web pages occasionally need dynamic content or server-side processing from the application server. These requests are handled by application servers built using Node.js, Ruby on Rails, or Java. They carry out business logic, interface with databases, run code, and produce dynamic web pages or API answers.
Database: The application server contacts the database server, which might be MySQL, PostgreSQL, or any other database system, if the web page needs information from a database. When data is requested, the database server retrieves it, organizes it, and then provides it back to the application server.
Conclusion
The process from entering “https://www.google.com" into your browser to seeing the result on your screen contains many interrelated elements. It’s essential for software engineers and IT specialists to comprehend how this process works. We investigated DNS requests, TCP/IP, firewalls, HTTPS/SSL, load-balancers, web servers, application servers, and databases in order to better understand the intricate infrastructure that supports our web browsing activities.
