Single Server Setup

To start with something simple, everything is running on a single server. Figure 1-1 shows the illustration of a single server setup where everything is running on one server: web app, database, cache, etc

Figure 1 - 1 , 2

Order of Execution of a Request

1. Users access websites through domain names, such as api.mysite.com. Usually, the Domain Name System (DNS) is a paid service provided by 3rd parties and not hosted by our servers.

2. Internet Protocol (IP) address is returned to the browser or mobile app. In the example, IP address 15.125.23.214 is returned.

3. Once the IP address is obtained, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) [1] requests are sent directly to your web server.

4. The web server returns HTML pages or JSON response for rendering.

Traffic Sources Possible

Next, let us examine the traffic source. The traffic to your web server comes from two sources: web application and mobile application.

• Web application: it uses a combination of server-side languages (Java, Python, etc.) to handle business logic, storage, etc., and client-side languages (HTML and JavaScript) for presentation.

• Mobile application: HTTP protocol is the communication protocol between the mobile app and the web server. JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is commonly used API response format to transfer data due to its simplicity.