At the beginning of the lesson, and on the Resource sheet, the stack shows the top level as DNS. Then the lesson goes on to explain how HTTP is also a high level protocol but this isn’t represented in the graphic. Why is that and how can it be represented visually in this stack?
Hi @mbrunner, Great question! I am looking at page 2 of the “HTTP and Abstraction on the Internet” resource and see a graphic with HTTP and DNS on the top. The way I understand it is HTTP is the protocol for sending and receiving information but it needs an IP address which DNS helps supply (that’s why they are on the same level). That’s my take but I’d love to hear others as well!
Oh yes! I guess I didn’t dig deep enough. Thanks so much. One of my test questions is for the students to draw that, or a similar, visual representation of an Internet Protocol Stack. Thanks again!
Totally get why that chart can be confusing. Agreed with @kaitie_obryan that you can think of HTTP and DNS at the same higher level working together. They are just protocols using agreed upon rules on how to transfer certain kinds of data through the rest of the stack.
If you had an IP address for a website you wouldn’t need to use DNS, but HTTP would still be used to send/receive data to load the website. Plug http://216.58.218.110 in your browser of choice for example and you’ll find yourself at Google.
But let’s say a gamer wants to jump on a server to play a game with friends, example.gameserver.net, then DNS get used to find the IP address of the that URL, but probably not HTTP because it isn’t a website.
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