Reference no: EM133089358

MCIS 6163 Computer Networking - Southern Arkansas University

Assignment - Simple Web Server & Client

Objectives
(A) To understand Client-Server communication via sockets
(B) To gain exposure to the basic operations of a Web Server and Client
(C) To explore basic structures of HTTP messages

Project Description
(A) You will be developing a multi-threaded Web server which interacts with any standard Web Clients ( You may use any web browser of your choice to test the functionality however you should also submit the a client as given in (B) below ). The Web server and Web client communicate using a text-based protocol called HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)

(B) Build a single threaded Web Client on your own which interacts with your Web Server, and downloads a file from the server

(C) Display the essential connection parameters of connection for both the Web client ( on the server side ) and for the Web Server ( on the client side )

Specification

Specifications - Server
The server being multi-threaded, should be able to handle multiple requests concurrently. The main thread ( server ), listens to a specified port like the standard port for HTTP (8080). Upon receiving a HTTP request, the server sets up a TCP connection to the requesting client and serves the request in a separate thread using a new port. After sending the response back to the client, it closes the connection. For this exercise you may choose any browser of your choice for testing. ( Internet Explorer or FireFox or Chrome )2. However you should submit a client program as per the the Section Specifications - Client.

The server is assumed to work with HTTP GET messages. If the requested file exists at the server, it responds with a "HTTP/1.1 200 OK" together with the requested page to the client, otherwise it sends a corresponding error message, "HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found" or "HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request".
- If running the server program using command line, the syntax should be

server_code_name port_number
- You must test your Web server implementation on your local machine using a Web browser. You need to specify the used port number within the URL. If omitting the port number portion, i.e., 8080, the browser should use the default port 8080. To cite an example,
http localhost 8080 index.html

- You should display/log the request and header lines of request messages on the server for the purpose of debugging.

Specifications - Client
- The client should be able to initiate a connection to the server, via a socket and request any page on the server. Upon receipt of the response message from the server, the client extracts and displays/logs the message status3, and then retrieves the page content from the corresponding message body.
- The requested file need not be HTML, even a text file would suffice 4.
- You may execute the client program using command line, with the follow- ing syntax,
client_code < server_IPaddress >< port_no ><
(a) Server_IPaddress: The IP address or name of the Web server, e.g.,
127.0.0.1 or localhost for the server running on the local machine.
(b) port_no: The port on which the server is listening to contnections from clients. If the port number is not entered, the default port 8080 should be used.
(c) requested_file_name: The name of the requested file, which may include the path to the file.

Specifications - Connection Parameters
You should be able to extract the following information from the connection objects,
(a) Calculate and Display RTT for the client request5.
(b) Print the relevant server details on client side. The examples could be Host Name of the server, socket family, socket type, protocol, timeout and get peer name 6.
(c) Print the relevant client details on server side. The examples could be Host Name of the client, socket family, socket type, protocol, timeout and get peer name 7.