HTML5 in Action

Appendix D. Computer networking primer

The client-server model is the foundation of the web: Your browser is the client, servers sit out in the internet cloud, and computer networking is how they talk to each other. JavaScript can only do so much by itself; most web applications are still built around the communication back to the web server. The fundamentals of computer networking—and terminology like headers, latency, throughput, and polling—are covered in most undergraduate computer science programs, but because web development attracts people from a broad range of backgrounds, this appendix assumes you’ve not been through a program like that. Here, we’ll introduce you to the following concepts:

• The basics of computer networking
• The overhead ...