The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level
protocol with the lightness and speed necessary for distributed,
collaborative, hypermedia information systems. It is a generic,
stateless, object-oriented protocol which can be used for many tasks,
such as name servers and distributed object management systems,
through extension of its request methods (commands). A feature of
HTTP is the typing of data representation, allowing systems to be
built independently of the data being transferred.
HTTP has been in use by the World-Wide Web global information
initiative since 1990. This specification reflects common usage of
the protocol referred to as "HTTP/1.0".
