With the WWW or not?

mickeyboymel

I have noticed on this site and some others that you can load the site as http://www.boards.ie or http://boards.ie

Both addresses require seperate log ons and load their own set of cookies,images etc.

Why is this and will it become the standard on all websites eventually, ie: no need to type www.?

Puck

Well the bit before the first "." (in this case it's "www") is usually for the server name, it's not always an actual server though it can just be for a specific part of the site (for instance, Boards.ie also has http://members.boards.ie for its member webspace area).

Some sites are configured so that if a user doesn't enter the www part of the URL they'll still be brought to the domain's main web server.

The reason this affects logins is because session tracking (how the web server knows who's using it for logins, etc.) is affected by the entire URL and not just the domain part (that's the part after the first ".").

As for this being a new standard or anything, it's not in my knowledge. Some sites just think it's handy I guess.

I hope this helps, I'm really useless at explaining this stuff and I'm not too sure I'm even right.

watty

No you're fairly correct.

by convention http sites start with www
ftp sites with ftp

But you can have anything. i.e. fred.boards.ie

boards.ie on its own really is just the domain, not any server at all, but it can be mapped to any server.

Of course the real servers do not actually need host names of www or fred or homepages or ftp, these are usually aliases created in the DNS server entries for the IP address.

All this goes back to before there was web pages / http / www stuff, which is much more recent than the Internet.

In fact web pages (using the HTTP) are a separate invention to Internet and as such both Internet and Web pages originally quite separate.

Web pages are just an application that happens to work on the Internet.

Finally the Internet is an illusion. It doesn't actually exist. Honest. Servers and their WAN and LAN based networks are real and everyone of those belongs to someone and costs someone money to install run and communicate.

When any two such systems are connected to each other using IP, this is an internet, an INTERconnected NETworks. The Internationally connected conclomeration of such internets is by convention called the Internet.

This is why no-one controls the Internet and it "seems" free, because it doesn't exist. Each separate network/server is individually owned / controlled / costing which is why ultimately "free" Internet is a myth.

Sposs

Im intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

watty

*EXCEPTION ERROR*

Context does not compute.


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