TECH: Netscape - Handy URL keystroke hints

[Duncan Grey <Duncan.Grey@A4503.CAMCNTY.GOV.UK>]

You wrote:
>The only reason so many URLs have "www" in them is mostly because it's
>>fashionable...

a coorespondent tells me this is not so:
"It will only work like this if the machine(s) listening to the IP address
of the actual domain name (eg cnn.com) are running an HTTP server.

In the case of CNN www.cnn.com is simply an alias for cnn.com, ie. their
web server is running on those machines (cnn.com has 5 IPs).

There is nothing to stop the site administrator moving the HTTP server
onto a different machine. If they do this and don't redirect accesses
to cnn.com to the new machine, you will be greeted with a message like
"Cannot connect to host".

This is the reason many sites will give you a URL of www.site.com. They
are then free to move the web server between different machines and just
change the alias for www so it points to the new machine. If you use the
URL they give you, then the change of machines will be completely transparent
to you. If you don't, there's a good chance it won't!

As an example, try accessing the St. Vincent College web server as
stvincent.ac.uk - you won't get anywhere as I haven't actually given
stvincent.ac.uk an IP address.

www.stvincent.ac.uk is an alias for raven.stvincent.ac.uk, which has IP
address 194.73.244.233. At the moment you could use any of these for
accessing our web site, but if we move the web server onto another
machine www.stvincent.ac.uk is the only one of these which will continue
to work."

But I dare say it's worth a go anyway!
Best wishes
Duncan

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_/ Duncan Grey, Head of Resources | Duncan.Grey@a4503.camcnty.gov.uk  _/
_/          Hinchingbrooke School, Huntingdon  UK  PE18 6BN           _/
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