You type https://example.com into a browser on one laptop at home, press Enter, and a moment later you see a webpage with text and images. That outcome happens because your browser and several other systems exchange a chain of messages, where each message triggers the next step.
In this course, that single story stays our running example. We will keep returning to the same concrete path, from your browser to your home Wi Fi router, out through your ISP, and onward until a server sends back the bytes your browser can turn into a page.
See the main systems involved in the request path.
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Once you treat the load as a sequence, the first split is simple. Your browser has to resolve a name, then it has to request content.
The name step uses the Domain Name System (DNS), which is a distributed lookup system that maps a domain name like example.com to an Internet Protocol (IP) address, which is the numeric address routers use to forward traffic to the right network. Only after DNS produces an IP address can the browser aim messages at the correct destination.
After that, the fetch step uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which is a request response protocol where the browser asks a server for a specific path like / and the server replies with bytes, often HTML. The next diagram separates the DNS lookup from the later HTTP exchange.
Explore the two step sequence from name to content.