A client-server connection allows multiple users to access information over a network, with one system acting as a server and others as clients. It can be direct or indirect, simple or complicated, and is used in various networks, from small business to large online games or social networking sites. Tiered systems can reduce the load on servers. It differs from peer-to-peer connections.
A client-server connection is a connection between two or more systems where one acts as a server and the others as clients. This is typically done to allow information to be accessed by multiple users over a large network. Such connections can be used on a small scale, such as for local business networks, or for large scale networks such as those used in online games or social networking sites. A client-server connection can be direct, between two machines, or indirect and involve different levels of interconnected systems.
The client-server connection is one of the most important aspects of any client-server system design and can be a physical connection or a long distance connection via multiple relays. In general, however, such a connection basically consists of any way in which two or more separate systems, the client and the server, are able to communicate to transmit data. The client-server connection can be quite simple, such as one machine acting as a server connected to another machine via a physical connection, such as an Ethernet cable, or more complicated, such as a server connected to thousands of users via the Internet.
A simple client-server connection can be a physical connection between a single server and one or more clients. The server acts as a system on which to store data, to which one or more client machines connect. Client machines can be used individually and without the necessary server information, although they are able to access data held on the server. When a server request is sent by a client, the server responds by sending the requested data through that connection to the client.
Complicated networks can be created where this client-server connection is repeated hundreds or thousands of times. A major social networking website or online gaming service can provide thousands or hundreds of thousands of clients with connections to a server. Multiple servers can then be used to increase the number of users who can be connected as clients, so that millions of clients can be connected to these various servers to access information. Tiered systems are often created to reduce the load on servers, by providing systems between client and server that can handle certain requests or act to “direct traffic” for the server. A client-server connection is in contrast to peer-to-peer connections where individual clients connect to each other, instead of a server, to share data.
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