• Servers and protocols are vital to the operation of the world wide web.Internet en australie image by Design from Fotolia.com
  
  Servers and protocols are two of the most important parts of computer networking, the basic foundation upon which the Internet and really any type of communication between computers is made possible. In general, servers are the places where the information on the Internet is stored and where a network's resources are managed, and protocols are the ways in which information is exchanged between different servers and Internet users. Many types of servers and protocols are used in daily Internet traffic. Learning a few of these can be useful in helping Internet users to understand how what they use every day works.
  
  

Audio / Video Servers

• Audio / video servers allow websites to broadcast streaming multimedia content. Streaming allows multimedia content to be displayed before the entire file has been downloaded. Audio / video servers house the information and the programs that make streaming possible.
  
  

Chat Servers

• Chat servers allow many users to interact in real time. The most obvious example of the types of websites that use chat servers are websites and instant messaging services, but these types of servers are also often used in navigation. However, it is important to note that many operating systems do have a few seconds of delay between when the information is sent and went it is received.
  
  

Proxy Servers

• Proxy servers are servers that are hooked up in between a web browser and other, external servers. Proxy servers help to make communication between these two places faster and more efficient.
  
  

Web Servers

• Web servers are where the actual information available online is stored. It extracts requested information from a disk and serves it to a Web browser.
  
  

Ethernet Protocol

• Ethernet is, by a wide margin, the most commonly used type of web protocol. When using this protocol, each computer on a particular network will "listen" to the cable that leads to the Internet, to see if the line is clear. If it is not clear, the computer will wait until it is clear. When two computers attempt to send information at the same time, a "collision" occurs. Both computers wait a random amount of time before trying again.
  
  

Local Talk Protocol

• Local talk is a protocol used only by Macintosh computers. This protocol runs basically the same way as Ethernet, except that before transmitting each computer sends a signal communicating its intention to transmit.
  
  

Token Ring Protocol

• Token ring protocol was created by IBM in the mid-1980s. An electronic "token" is passed to a chain of interconnected computers. If a computer has information to send, it does so, and if it does not it passes the token on to the next computer. When a computer does have information to send, it connects it to the token, which continues moving between computers until it reaches the computer for which the data is intended.
  
  

FDDI Protocol

• Fiber Distributed Data Interface, or FDDI, is a protocol used to connect local area networks (LANs) to one another. It uses the same basic concept as token ring protocol. Information is sent over a fiber-optic cable. FDDI is a very fast and efficient way to send data.