In computing, a client is a piece of hardware or software that accesses a service made available by a server as part of the client–server model. Clients initiate communication sessions with servers — they request content or a service, and the server responds. Often clients and servers run on separate physical machines connected over a network, but both can also run on the same device.
The term is context-dependent: a laptop browsing a website is a client of a web server; a mobile app is a client of an API server; a smart home hub is a client of a cloud service. What makes something a client is the role it plays — the requester — not the hardware it runs on.
In This Home
Devices on the home network (phones, laptops, smart home hubs) act as clients when they request data or services from local servers in the lab or from external services on the internet.