The HTTP protocol is the base mechanism for data transmission over the World Wide Web. Its scope of influence includes distributed and collaborative information systems with hypermedia support. Since computing systems have increased their complexity, HTTP is designed to provide a full use of the resources found on the Web.

Briefly, a request encloses specifying an operation on a resource (an HTML page, an image, etc.) located on a remote origin server. Conventional HTTP client applications are the Web browsers.

The major unit in the HTTP is the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). It is also referred to as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or as an Uniform Resource Name (URN). The URI indicates the network resource to which to apply a method. Messages are delivered in a format defined by the Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME). MIME types and formats are described in RFC 2387.

The HTTP Bundle holds an HTTP server that delivers resources to its clients by using TCP/IP sockets. The HTTP Bundle supports the HEAD, GET, and POST methods of HTTP 1.1, using primary port # 80, which is conventional, and secondary port # 8080 to listen for client requests. It processes the requests and sends adequate responses to the clients.

Plain HTTP communication can be deactivated by setting the configuration property onPlainServer from the mbs.http.pid configuration to "false" or by setting the system property mbs.http.onPlainServer to "false" before starting the HTTP Bundle. Refer to the HTTP Plain Server Configuration sections in the Setup Guide and in the User Guide for more information about configuring the HTTP Bundle.