Why is it that on some websites you have to type www in order to view that webpage. In most cases all you have to do is the domain name and www automatically comes up.
2007-09-20 16:39:32 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Internet ➔ Other - Internet
Seems you are not a techie...its a hard subject to illustrate with a real life example therefore let me put it the easiest way possible. :)
first the basics, lets take it in li`l chunks..
- once you purchase a domain name (www.sampledomain.com) you will need to address the domain name to a certain IP (Internet Protocol) address (20.33.55.0).
- This IP address (20.33.55.0) will actually be your server, in other words, your web-site files are stored in this server
- so how will we point the domain name to the IP address? thats where DNS (Domain Name Server) records come into play. The DNS records maintain information of your domain name, ip addresses that relate to your domain name etc. by default the DNS record will be written without the "www" and assign only the domain name (ex: sampledomain.com 20.33.55.0) below the line of the default name we can write any number of subdomains, view the example below to gain the idea as to how the DNS records will display the details.
www 20.33.55.0 #server 1 your site server in USA
mail 20.33.55.1 #server 2 your mail server in Canada
blog 20.33.55.2 #server 3 your blog server in China
Although the example is a bit far fetched, it is possible to host different sections of your site in several different locations geographically, ever tried mail.yahoo.com? or answers.yahoo.com without the www? this is how it works... now i hope you understood the above...
Coming to the point
as for you question now, if the DNS has been explicitly specified the records ("www", "mail") and pointed to the respective functioning IP address, then yes, it will serve you the page, if the DNS was not specified, then nope you will get a 404 Error. and in that case you'll have to directly type the domain as "sampledomain.com" or "http://sampledomain.com"
Hope it Helps
2007-09-20 22:21:45 · answer #1 · answered by Prem 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I don't think you have to type the http or the www. It is assumed. Try it. Go up the the address bar and type
hp.com -- when you hit Enter, it will change to
http://www.hp.com
2007-09-20 17:20:18 · answer #2 · answered by TheHumbleOne 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
imho, when they add their site urls on dns records, they could've missed that part, to point thissite.com to www.thissite.com
2007-09-20 16:56:00 · answer #3 · answered by techTalks 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋