Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a communications protocol for the transfer of information on the intranet and the World Wide Web. Its original purpose was to provide a way to publish and retrieve hypertext pages over the Internet. HTTP development was coordinated by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), culminating in the publication of a series of Request for Comments (RFCs), most notably RFC 2616 (June 1999), which defines HTTP/1.1, the version of HTTP in common use.