why www?

[Jose]

What is the purpose of the common www prefix for websites, and what does
www2 mean? What is the difference between a site like www.mysite.com
and mysite.com?

Jose

 

[Benjamin Niemann]

What is the purpose of the common www prefix for websites, and what does
www2 mean?

'www' is just a convention that has been established in the early days of
the WWW. You can use any name as the subdomain part or none at all.
Names like www2 are sometimes used when there are more than one machine
hosting a website (load-balancing - you'll only have to worry about such
things, if you have to host a high-traffic site).

What is the difference between a site like www.mysite.com
and mysite.com?

These are different domainnames and could be used to host different sites -
but usually both names point to the same site.

If you care about your search engine ranking, you should only use one name
for your site - either www.example.org or example.org, whatever you prefer
(and configure the 'unused' domain to redirect to the 'official' domain).

 

[David Segall]

What is the purpose of the common www prefix for websites, and what does
www2 mean? What is the difference between a site like www.mysite.com
and mysite.com?

Jose

In the beginning every computer on the Internet had a unique address.
To send a message to one of them you worked from right to left so you
sent a message to .com which knew the address of mysite.com which knew
the address of fredscomputer.mysite.com. A convention arose so that
you could expect a service to be provided by a computer that had a
suitable name. ftp.mysite.com handled all the FTP file transfers and
pop3.mysite.com handled all the incoming mail. Similarly, the computer
named www located at mysite.com is expected to handle all the http
requests.

The concept is simple but since there are a few computers on the way
they are likely to do some translations for you. If you enter
mysite.com into your browser it may translate it to www.mysite.com
before it accesses the Internet. A computer at mysite.com, or along
the way, could send all http requests to the machine called
fredscomputer.mysite.com but that computer can be programmed to
display the location as www.mysite.com. It may forward some requests
to another computer called www2.mysite.com. To add to the confusion
there can be a few hundred computers cooperating to look like one
computer called, for example, www.google.com.

 

[dorayme]

What is the purpose of the common www prefix for websites, and what does
www2 mean? What is the difference between a site like www.mysite.com
and mysite.com?

Jose

So you are saying that love is helpless?

 

[Jose]

[re: my sig]

So you are saying that love is helpless?

Love wells up (or not) of its own accord, and not as a result of a
conscious choice to have those feelings.

Jose

 

[dorayme]

[re: my sig]
So you are saying that love is helpless?

Love wells up (or not) of its own accord, and not as a result of a
conscious choice to have those feelings.

Jose

But one can bet that the feeling will come up if one gets a chance with
someone one sees or meets... I don't think it is so cut and dried. BTW,
the answers to your question have been well meant but not as clear as
they could be...I might have to have a go myself if someone with the
knowledge does not do a better job...

BTW, Mark, old son, we did thrash them and how....

 

[Richard Brooks]

So you are saying that love is helpless?

There are probably a lot who have 'befriended/married' those who have a
big house or bank balance and had chosen not to fall in love with
someone who goes through garbage cans and stands on street corners
shouting at passing cars! ;-)

I prefer Gandhi's "A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the
prerogative of the brave."

Richard.

 

[Daniel Schierbeck]

What is the purpose of the common www prefix for websites, and what does
www2 mean? What is the difference between a site like www.mysite.com
and mysite.com?

Jose

Personally, I think the "www" prefix is outdated. I never type it in
anymore, 'cause if a site requires the prefix, Firefox handles it nicely.

Firefox is my best friend.


Cheers,
Daniel

 

[Jose]

and had chosen not to fall in love with...

had chosen not to get close enough to allow it to happen. Different.

Jose

 

[Jose]

(e-mail address removed) says... (moved to this thread)

But one can bet that the feeling will come up if one gets a chance with
someone one sees or meets...

I don't get that feeling with everyone I meet. And I bet that if the
feeling does well up for real, you can't (easily) shove it back down.

I don't think it is so cut and dried.

Nothing is. Life can't be reduced to a sig, but sometimes a piece of it
can be illuminated from a different angle thus.

Jose

 

[Neo Geshel]

'www' is just a convention that has been established in the early days of
the WWW. You can use any name as the subdomain part or none at all.
Names like www2 are sometimes used when there are more than one machine
hosting a website (load-balancing - you'll only have to worry about such
things, if you have to host a high-traffic site).

This is not entirely true. Load-balancing involves work done at the DNS
and server level, not at the subdomain level. With Load-Balancing, you
could have 100 servers handling requests from web surfers, but you would
not notice any difference between them in terms of the domain name.

Usually any usage of “www2†or the like is usually the result of a lack
of creativity *somewhere* in the chain of responsibility for setting up
a subdomain. Subdomains are supposed to provide the ability to set up
different “sub-sites†that are tightly related to a main,central site
(“wwwâ€), and as such, should be named accordingly (“extranet.domain.comâ€
for a company extranet, “ftp.domain.com†for a public FTPstore,
“mail.domain.com†for e-mail servers, etc., etc.).

FYI, load balancing involves setting a domain name to point to multiple
IP addresses. Each server that has one of the IP addresses runs not only
the web server, but also load-balancing software. This software creates
a network between the servers that emulates one large, super-powerful
server, so that if a visitor uses one server, and that server gets
overloaded, the visitor can be transparently switched over to another
server without the visitor ever knowing that it occurred. The
load-balancing software ensures that the user's session with the one
server is transported across the entire network of load-balanced
servers, so that any one of them can pick up that user transparently if
the first server gets overloaded.

These are different domainnames and could be used to host different sites -
but usually both names point to the same site.

If you care about your search engine ranking, you should only use one name
for your site - either www.example.org or example.org, whatever you prefer
(and configure the 'unused' domain to redirect to the 'official' domain).

Using just “domain.com†is bad form. The whole point of asubdomain is
to specify a service under the umbrella of the domain name. “wwwâ€
specifies a web site. “ftp†specifies a public ftp store.And so on.
When you use just a domain name “http://domain.comâ€, you have to do
extra work on the DNS side to ensure that any such request gets routed
properly. My first host (and any of the major web hosts before 1998 or
so) never set up “domain.com†to point anywhere; a user *had* to enter
“www.domain.com†to get to any of the sites that I had hosted with them,
and getting them to point “domain.com†to an actual web site cost extra
because it was an extra DNS entry that had to be maintained.

This changed once the vast legions of unwashed newbies flooded the
Internet, and became befuddled when “domain.com†came back “page not
foundâ€, even though “http://www.domain.com†was clearly printed on all
of a company’s stationary.

I hope this helps.
...Geshel
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[JDS]

I hope this helps.

Good answer. sig is a bit long, though.

 

[Greg N.]

Neo Geshel wrote:

Using just “domain.com†is bad form. The whole point of a subdomain is
to specify a service under the umbrella of the domain name. “wwwâ€
specifies a web site. “ftp†specifies a public ftp store. And so on.
When you use just a domain name “http://domain.comâ€, you have to do
extra work on the DNS side to ensure that any such request gets routed
properly. My first host (and any of the major web hosts before 1998 or
so) never set up “domain.com†to point anywhere; a user *had* to enter
“www.domain.com†to get to any of the sites that I had hosted with them,
and getting them to point “domain.com†to an actual web site cost extra
because it was an extra DNS entry that had to be maintained.

This changed once the vast legions of unwashed newbies flooded the
Internet, and became befuddled when “domain.com†came back “page not
foundâ€...

So, in essence, while "domain.com" used to be bad form a decade ago, it
is OK today, no?

 

[Neredbojias]

With neither quill nor qualm, Richard Brooks quothed:

There are probably a lot who have 'befriended/married' those who have a
big house or bank balance and had chosen not to fall in love with
someone who goes through garbage cans and stands on street corners
shouting at passing cars! ;-)

Ah, yes, the memories... You haven't lived until you've had sex in a
dumpster.

I prefer Gandhi's "A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the
prerogative of the brave."

Oh come on! After the first few times, unzipping your fly is a piece of
cake.

 

[Benjamin Niemann]

This is not entirely true. Load-balancing involves work done at the DNS
and server level, not at the subdomain level. With Load-Balancing, you
could have 100 servers handling requests from web surfers, but you would
not notice any difference between them in terms of the domain name.

I did not claim, that this is *the* way to implement load balancing. There
are many ways to implement load-balancing, including round-robin DNS
setups, reverse proxies etc.
Redirecting users to one of various hosts (sometimes called 'wwwX') is a
very simple, rather inefficient, but sometimes sufficient kind of
load-balancing.

Usually any usage of ?www2? or the like is usually the result of a lack
of creativity *somewhere* in the chain of responsibility for setting up
a subdomain. Subdomains are supposed to provide the ability to set up
different ?sub-sites? that are tightly related to a main, central site
(?www?), and as such, should be named accordingly (?extranet.domain.com?
for a company extranet, ?ftp.domain.com? for a public FTP store,
?mail.domain.com? for e-mail servers, etc., etc.).

[snip description of DNS based load-balancing]

These are different domainnames and could be used to host different sites
- but usually both names point to the same site.

Using just ?domain.com? is bad form. The whole point of a subdomain is
to specify a service under the umbrella of the domain name. ?www?
specifies a web site. ?ftp? specifies a public ftp store. And so on.

This was the original intention of the subdomain concept. But today there is
no real reason for this. Sites are either hosted in a much simpler
configuration - a single server doing 'everything', and there is no point
in giving different names to the same server. And large sites use a much
more sophisticated setup than 'one www, one ftp and one mail server'.

IMHO subdomain should today used to devide the services by content and not
by the used protocol - the URI scheme should be used to specify the
protocol, not the subdomain (which it wouldn't do anyway).

And (again IMHO) using 'example.com' as the primary portal for a domain is
valid approach (and supporting www.example.com only as a legacy alias).

Though I personally prefer 'www.example.com' over 'example.com' - but I
think it's just a matter of personal preference today.

 

[Stan McCann]

What is the purpose of the common www prefix for websites, and what
does www2 mean? What is the difference between a site like
www.mysite.com and mysite.com?

Legacy. In the beginning (of the www), there were servers each with a
host name. Then came web server software that ran on servers being set
up as a www server. There were so few at the time, www became a
natural host name for the www server. www2 came as a result of
unimaginative sysadmins setting up a second www server.

Although unneeded except for those that automatically put www. in front
of every url, most of my sites accept both methods, ie:
http://www.abateofnm.org/ and http://abateofnm.org/. One site I manage
cannot do that as http://www.nmsu.edu/ is New Mexico State University's
site while http://alamo.nmsu.edu/ is New Mexico State University at
Alamogordo's. I suppose I could ask for www.alamo.nmsu.edu alias but
don't really think there is a need.

 

[dorayme]

Legacy. In the beginning (of the www), there were servers each with a
host name. Then came web server software that ran on servers being set
up as a www server. There were so few at the time, www became a
natural host name for the www server. www2 came as a result of
unimaginative sysadmins setting up a second www server.

Now this is starting to be a good explanation Stan. (I mildly
complained before...)