Tutorial
How a Web Page Travels From a Server to Your Browser
Every page load is a small journey. Here is the route it takes.
- Author
- By Asha Verma
- Reviewed by
- Reviewed by Devon Blake
- Last reviewed
- Last reviewed 2026-07-02
- Reading time
- 7 min read
By the end you will be able to trace a page load from address bar to pixels.
Typing an address feels instant, but a surprising number of handoffs happen in the background: naming, connecting, requesting, and rendering. This tutorial walks through each stage in order.
At a glance
- Difficulty
- Beginner
- Time required
- 7 minutes
- Prerequisites
- None
1. Turning a name into an address
Your browser first asks the Domain Name System to translate a readable name like example.com into a numeric IP address that computers can route traffic to.
2. Opening a secure connection
The browser and server perform a handshake, agreeing on encryption keys so the data that follows cannot be read or altered in transit.
3. Requesting and receiving the page
The browser sends an HTTP request for the page. The server responds with HTML, which the browser begins parsing immediately, fetching linked assets such as styles, scripts, and images as it goes.
Sources
- How Browsers Work: Behind the scenes of modern web browsers, Tali Garsiel and Paul Irish