W3

HTTP and HTTPS.  Please respond to the following:

• Analyze the current uses of HTTP and HTTPS, and predict the future outlook for both protocols. Describe any foreseen changes in the frequency or way each protocol is used.
• Identify the various uses for HTTP and HTTPS, and justify the use of one over the other. Include two examples to demonstrate the use of each protocol.

Classmates:

Analyze the current uses of HTTP and HTTPS, and predict the future outlook for both protocols. Describe any foreseen changes in the frequency or way each protocol is used.

HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. It is a set of standards that allow users of the web to exchange information found on the web pages from their original servers. HTTP uses port 80, to send and receive data packets over the web between clients and servers to allow us to communicate with other websites. The client sends a request message to a HTTO server (After the TCP handshake) that hosts a website, the server then replies with response message. The response message contains completion status information. In addition of using TCP, HTTP also uses UDP (User Datagram Protocol). UDP is less reliable that TCP but widely used in video conferencing, video games, and streaming because it allows individual packets to be dropped and received in a different order for better performance.

HTTPS stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. It is the secure version of HTTP. By using this protocol, all communications between our browser and the website are encrypted using port 443. Web browsers like Internet Explorer or Google Chrome display a padlock icon in the address bar as an indicator that HTTPS connection is in use. HTTPS connection uses one of two secure protocols to encrypt communications. They either user SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or TLS (Transport Later Security). Both SSL and TLS use the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) system. The PKI system uses two 'keys' to encrypt communications, a 'public' key and a 'private' key. Anything encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted by the private key and vice-versa.

All communications sent over regular HTTP connections are in 'plain text' and can be read by any hacker that manages to break into the connection between your browser and the website. This presents a clear danger if the 'communication' is on an order form and includes your credit card details or social security number. With a HTTPS connection, all communications are securely encrypted. This means that even if somebody managed to break into the connection, they would not be able decrypt any of the data which passes between you and the website.

References,

https://www.keycdn.com/blog/difference-between-http-and-https/

https://www.instantssl.com/ssl-certificate-products/https.html

Identify the various uses for HTTP and HTTPS, and justify the use of one over the other. Include two examples to demonstrate the use of each protocol.

Because HTTPS is the secured version of HTTP, HTTPS is used for the highly confidential online transactions such as banking and shopping because all our banking information needs to be protected and secure when we use them through the internet and HTTPS offers that over HTTP.

One of the main reasons that we are still using HTTP even though we have the secured version of it, it that we have servers that use Proxy and Proxy's don’t allow direct SSL connection as it does not know to which external address it is connecting. Also, HTTPS is so much slower than running HTTP because HTTPS securely encrypt communications between two parties, this requires both parties continuously spend valuable CPU cycles. HTTPS can be expensive; we still need to purchase an SSL certificate from a root certificate authority so that bowsers and web clients can communicate using this protocol.

With HTTP, we go to the browser and interact with data. HTTP’s job is to present that data to us, and browsers are the means of doing so. Mozilla’s Firefox browser, for example, understands HTTP instructions and arranges the data as the site’s designer intended. The browser knows what to do when we click. It uses HTTP to do this. But HTTP cannot do much beyond that. How the data travels from Point A to Point B, or even if it travels at all, is none of HTTP’s concern. This is a great compromise if you want speed and elegance and couldn’t care less about security

References,

http://www.biztechmagazine.com/article/2007/07/http-vs-https

https://www.instantssl.com/https-tutorials/what-is-https.html