HTTP is designed to permit intermediate network elements to improve or enable communications between clients and servers. High-traffic websites often benefit from web cache servers that deliver content on behalf of upstream servers to improve response time.
HTTP is a protocol for fetching resources such as HTML documents. It is the foundation of any data exchange on the Web and it is a client-server protocol, which means requests are initiated by the recipient, usually the Web browser. A complete document is typically constructed from resources such as text content, layout instructions, images, videos, scripts, and more.
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is a core Internet protocol that defines how data is exchanged between clients and servers on the web. Enables communication between web browsers and web servers.
Basically, HTTP is an TCP/IP based communication protocol, which is used to deliver data (HTML files, image files, query results etc) on the World Wide Web. The default port is TCP 80, but other ports can be used. It provides a standardized way for computers to communicate with each other.
Now that both HTTP extensions and HTTP/1.1 are stable specifications (RFC2616 at that time), W3C has closed the HTTP Activity. An effort to revise HTTP/1.1 started in 2006, which led to the creation of the IETF httpbis Working Group. Work completed with the publication of RFC 723X (See below)
HTTP is an application-layer protocol for transmitting hypermedia documents, such as HTML. It was designed for communication between web browsers and web servers, but it can also be used for other purposes, such as machine-to-machine communication, programmatic access to APIs, and more.