All communications over the web are made in accordance with a protocol. A particularly important protocol for fostering communication between systems is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

Billions of images, videos, text files, documents, and other files are transferred across the internet on a daily basis. These files are all transferred through HTTP. HTTP is an application protocol for distributed and hypermedia information systems. It can be said to be a foundational component for communication across the internet. A major benefit of using HTTP for data transfer across systems is that it is highly reliable. This is as a result of its utilization of reliable protocols, such as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP).