What Happens in the Second After You Type a Web Address
Between pressing Enter and seeing a page, your browser finds a server, checks its identity and downloads dozens of files. Here is the journey.
Wren Takahashi Security and Web Editor
Typing an address and pressing Enter feels like a single action. Behind it, your browser runs through a sequence of steps, most of them finished in a fraction of a second, and each one explains something about how the web behaves.
Finding the server
Computers on the internet find each other by numeric addresses, not names. Your browser first asks a directory service, called DNS, which number belongs to the name you typed. The answer is often cached nearby, so this step is usually instant.
Checking it is really them
For secure sites, the browser and the server then agree on encryption and the server presents a certificate proving it owns the name. The padlock in the address bar means that check passed. It does not mean the site is trustworthy, only that you are connected privately to whoever owns that name.
Worth knowing
A padlock tells you the connection is private, not that the website is honest. Scam sites can have padlocks too.
Downloading the page
The browser then requests the page itself. The first file describes the page and points to many others: styles, scripts, images and fonts, sometimes from several different servers. The browser fetches them in parallel and assembles the page as they arrive.
Why some sites feel slow
A page that loads dozens of scripts from different companies, many of them for advertising and tracking, has to make many more of these trips. That is why blocking trackers can make some sites noticeably faster.
Every extra script is another trip to another server before the page settles.
psst, there is a letter