===================================================
sample HTTP session using the "netcat" (nc) command
===================================================
-Ian! D. Allen - idallen@idallen.ca - www.idallen.com

The "nc" (netcat) TCP/IP "Swiss Army Knife" program is a "pure" way to
connect your keyboard with a remote TCP/IP daemon.  It is similar to
"telnet", except it doesn't try to auto-negotiate any line parameters
first.  It is useful for connecting directly to many text-based Internet
protocols.  Use "nc" in preference to "telnet", when available.

One such text-based protocol is the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
used to send and receive Web pages over the Internet.  It is documented
in RFC2616:

    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616
    http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2616.html

My input is marked by "*" in the examples below.  Note the blank line
used to signal the end of my input to the server.

In 2006:

  * $ nc -v www.microsoft.com http
    lb1.www.ms.akadns.net [207.46.18.30] 80 (http) open
  * HEAD / HTTP/1.0
  *
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Connection: close
    Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2006 08:29:31 GMT
    Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
    P3P: CP="ALL IND DSP COR ADM CONo CUR CUSo IVAo IVDo PSA PSD TAI TELo OUR SAMo CNT COM INT NAV ONL PHY PRE PUR UNI"
    X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
    X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
    Cache-Control: private
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
    Content-Length: 22874

In 2011:

  * $ nc -v www.microsoft.com http
    Connection to www.microsoft.com 80 port [tcp/www] succeeded!
  * HEAD / HTTP/1.0
  *
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Cache-Control: no-cache
    Content-Length: 1020
    Content-Type: text/html
    Last-Modified: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:35:26 GMT
    Accept-Ranges: bytes
    ETag: "67991fbd76a6c91:0"
    Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
    VTag: 791558442600000000
    P3P: CP="ALL IND DSP COR ADM CONo CUR CUSo IVAo IVDo PSA PSD TAI TELo OUR SAMo CNT COM INT NAV ONL PHY PRE PUR UNI"
    X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
    Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2011 08:45:00 GMT
    Connection: keep-alive

You can also use "GET" instead of "HEAD" to fetch an entire raw web page.
The server below requires the "Host" subcommand (typed after the "GET"
command) to choose the correct virtual web server on the shared machine
that has multiple domains, so we use the HTTP/1.1 protocol (not 1.0):

In 2006:

  * $ nc -v teaching.idallen.com http
    DNS fwd/rev mismatch: idallen.com != server20.tchmachines.com
    idallen.com [216.180.243.122] 80 (http) open
  * GET /net2003/06w/notes/README.txt HTTP/1.1
  * Host: teaching.idallen.com
  *
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2006 08:33:32 GMT
    Server: Apache/1.3.34 (Unix) mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_ssl/2.8.25 OpenSSL/0.9.6b
    Last-Modified: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 03:57:42 GMT
    ETag: "39298c-1a7-439a5236"
    Accept-Ranges: bytes
    Content-Length: 423
    Connection: close
    Content-Type: text/plain

    ========================================
    README - Index to this NET2003 directory
    ========================================

    Ian! D. Allen - idallen@idallen.ca

    This directory contains a set of notes for BIT NET2003.

    File names of the form "week01notes.txt" are study notes and exercises
    for each week.  Read these files to know what to do each week.

    File names of the form "exercise01.txt" are exercises to be completed.

In 2011:

  * $ nc -v teaching.idallen.com http
    Connection to teaching.idallen.com 80 port [tcp/www] succeeded!
  * GET /net2003/06w/notes/README.txt HTTP/1.1
  * Host: teaching.idallen.com
  *
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2011 08:56:31 GMT
    Server: Apache/2.2.17 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.17 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635
    Last-Modified: Tue, 04 Jan 2005 18:22:41 GMT
    ETag: "1cf072a-1a7-3ecddf450de40"
    Accept-Ranges: bytes
    Content-Length: 423
    Content-Type: text/plain

    ========================================
    README - Index to this NET2003 directory
    ========================================

    Ian! D. Allen - idallen@idallen.ca

    This directory contains a set of notes for BIT NET2003.

    File names of the form "week01notes.txt" are study notes and exercises
    for each week.  Read these files to know what to do each week.

    File names of the form "exercise01.txt" are exercises to be completed.

-- 
| Ian! D. Allen  -  idallen@idallen.ca  -  Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
| Home Page: http://idallen.com/   Contact Improv: http://contactimprov.ca/
| College professor (Free/Libre GNU+Linux) at: http://teaching.idallen.com/
| Defend digital freedom:  http://eff.org/  and have fun:  http://fools.ca/