Week 40 of this year and into Q4, almost time for Mariah Carey to enter the radio waves.
This week, we seek to understand the difference between the Web and the Internet.
What I Learned This Week#
The Difference Between the Web and the Internet#
What is the difference between the Web and the Internet?
Is the web the same thing as the internet?
It turns out, the web is a subset of the internet.
Loosely, the internet is the infrastructure that transfers packets between endpoints. HTTP is an application layer protocol that uses the lower layers of the internet, to provide content primarily to web browsers. HTTP is used for many things in addition to this primary use case. The web is powered by lower-level protocols and HTTP.
In contrast, the internet is more than just HTTP. There are other use cases for the internet and even other application layer protocols, like email (SMTP), peer-to-peer networks (torrents) and file transfers (FTP).
Reverse Proxies#
A proxy server is a server that sits between your device and the internet. You might also have a company proxy where all of your organisation’s traffic is routed through that proxy. The proxy might do things like caching requests or blocking certain content.
A reverse proxy is similar to this, but instead, it sits in front of your website’s server. Nginx is one example of a reverse proxy.
As of March 2022, Netcraft estimated that Nginx served 22.01% of the million busiest websites
A reverse proxy will do many of the same things as a normal proxy like caching but also things like load balancing. Article on this from Cloudflare here.
Fixing the Web#
Tim Berners-Lees is the original creator of HTTP, which many see as the incarnation of the Web. It’s not described in much detail during this interview, but the interviewees share some great points about the future of the web.
Currently, we have a problem where our personal data is quite siloed. We have data with Google, data with Facebook, and data with other companies. This data is all separate, and can’t be easily combined.
Imagine if you owned your data, and you chose to share that with a travel company, or when finding a place to eat. Your entire history could be seen, including previous travel, photos, reviews, friends etc. Perhaps this opens it’s own privacy concerns, but owning your blob of data gives you much more control over who you share that data with, and the quality of insights you can have by sharing it.
Typescript Doco#
Javascript was implemented in 10 days by Brendan Eich. Since then, people have realised that types are quite helpful. This is a documentary on the history of Typescript.
HTTP2 Primer#
Interesting (very) technical talk on HTTP2.
Introduction to Quic#
Quic is a transport layer protocol, developed by Google, that powers applications using HTTP3. It’s not widely used yet, but I imagine we will see more of this in the coming years.
Personal#
- Completing the “Round The Bay” 100k bike ride next weekend (strava)
🔚#
Thanks for reading,
James