2007-11-30 00:00:24 · 6 answers · asked by shehan 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Internet ➔ Other - Internet
The letters "www" are commonly found at the beginning of web addresses because of the long-standing practice of naming Internet hosts (servers) according to the services they provide. So for example, the host name for a web server is often "www"; for an FTP server, "ftp"; and for a USENET news server, "news" or "nntp" (after the news protocol NNTP). These host names appear as DNS subdomain names, as in "www.example.com".
This use of such prefixes is not required by any technical standard; indeed, the first web server was at "nxoc01.cern.ch", and even today many web sites exist without a "www" prefix. The "www" prefix has no meaning in the way the main web site is shown. The "www" prefix is simply one choice for a web site's subdomain name.
Some web browsers will automatically try adding "www." to the beginning, and possibly ".com" to the end, of typed URLs if no host is found without them. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Opera will also prefix "http://www." and append ".com" to the address bar contents if the Control and Enter keys are pressed simultaneously. For example, entering "example" in the address bar and then pressing either just Enter or Control+Enter will usually resolve to "http://www.example.com", depending on the exact browser version and its settings.
The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, a user views web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks. The World Wide Web was created in 1989 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Since then, Berners-Lee has played an active role in guiding the development of web standards (such as the markup languages in which web pages are composed), and in recent years has advocated his vision of a Semantic Web. Robert Cailliau, also at CERN, was an early evangelist for the project.
2007-11-30 00:07:04 · answer #1 · answered by Robert S 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
(A little history to make your day...)
The Internet does not work by "names". The name "Yahoo.com" means nothing to a computer. For the Internet to find something, it has to know the IP address, not the name, of the site. So the Internet is set up with what are called Domain Name Servers (DNS) which convert names like "yahoo.com" into their IP address.
The very first DNS server was one called "www". If you wanted to find a site, you have to put "www" at the beginning of the name (www.yahoo.com) to first send your request to that "www" server. It then looked up the rest of the name (yahoo.com) converted it to the address, and connected you.
Today, DNS has moved from servers and is now stored on routers and other devices that do the DNS converters. When you enter an address today, your ISP's router will make an attempt to resolve the name. If it can not, then it will go to a DNS server and ask for help. If you procede the name with "www", you will bypass the router and go to a DNS server instead.
I have seen cases where if a router can not resolve a name, it will not pass the request on to a DNS server, and so the site is not found. However is you retype the same site with the "www" then it is found. So many businesses with include the "www" has part of their address to increase the possibility that people will reach their site.
But 99% of the time, the "www" is not needed any more.
2007-11-30 00:14:23 · answer #2 · answered by dewcoons 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The one address has www at the beginning, the other doesn't.
Without going into way too much detail, www.blah.com is the main web address of a particular domain. Then something.blah.com is a subdomain, which they would use for providing an easy to remember address for one of their site's sections.
For example:
www.nbc.com
lawandorder.nbc.com
If you are talking about the difference between nbc.com and www.nbc.com, most web site admins allow you to type in an address without the www to make it easier to go there.
2007-11-30 00:07:45 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Usually there is no difference.
Historically www. was used to indicate a website was at the address.
2007-11-30 00:06:07 · answer #4 · answered by peter 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It is both the same. No difference
2007-11-30 00:09:47 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Robert you nerd ;)...maybe someone else wanted to say something to the topic =P
2007-11-30 00:08:22 · answer #6 · answered by Caleb 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋