The Network · Workshop 05 · Practice
How Computers Agree
Five steps. About 25 minutes. Up to 7 stars. The constellation you're building is called First Handshake.
The Network · Workshop 05 · Practice
Five steps. About 25 minutes. Up to 7 stars. The constellation you're building is called First Handshake.
Two computers can't talk if they don't agree on how to talk. A protocol is the agreement — what to say, in what order, with what timing.
Before your phone and a website can exchange any data, they have to do a handshake. Your phone says "I want to talk." The server says "OK, I'm ready." Your phone says "OK, here we go." Then real data starts flowing. That's the TCP handshake. It happens millions of times a second across the internet.
Once the connection is open, the actual conversation usually uses HTTP — which is just another protocol. Your phone says GET /homepage. The server replies with the page. Then the connection closes.
By the end of this workshop you'll have written one full request-response conversation between a phone and a server.
That's the warm-up. When you've actually read it — not skimmed — tap below.
Pick all that are true.
Click a step, then where it belongs.
Pretend a phone is asking a server for a webpage. Write each line of the conversation, what each side says, in order.
Stuck? Try: Phone: SYN. Server: SYN-ACK. Phone: ACK. Phone: GET /homepage HTTP/1.1. Server: 200 OK, here's the page. Server: .... Phone: thanks, FIN.
One sentence.