[Love Calm Quiet]

I'm surfed these forums and the web for last five years, occasionally encountering www3, now here occasionally encountering ref to www4. I'm wondering what's the diff, what the implications?

I've googled, Jeeved, and MacNN-searched on www3 or www4, but the problem is I just get SITES that start with those prefixes.

So, as in all cases of such befuddlement, I turn to the infinite wisdom of the Lounge. Someone want to enlightened my dimness (strengthen the weakness of my geekness?)

[Eriamjh]

I think it means that you were transferred to server number 2, 3, or 4 based on traffic. It's not really an address.

[chabig]

The first part of any URL (the part between the :// and the next / identifies the specific computer that serves the site. Everything after that identifies the web page. Here is an example URL:

http://www.apple.com/hardware/

In this example, apple.com is the domain. This is all the internet needs to get your request to Apple. That's why email addresses only need the domain after the @.

The www is used by Apple to identify the server that will respond to you. In this case, their web server. But the letters "www" are only used by convention. The website administrator can choose to use any combination of letters for this part of the URL. Some companies may use www3, for example, to identify a specific server. It really doesn't matter. And it's completely up to the website.

Chris

[ReggieX]

Originally Posted by Eriamjh

I think it means that you were transferred to server number 2, 3, or 4 based on traffic. It's not really an address.

Ah, but it IS really an address! A lot of companies have different servers scattered around for various purposes. The company I work for has www.DOMAIN for the main web site, www1.DOMAIN for and secure enrollments that belong to a couple of groups, and secure.DOMAIN for a few applications that run on the www.DOMAIN servers but aren't part of the same needs as the www1 server.

Go to IBM.com and start looking around, you'll get subdomains like:
http://www-03.ibm.com/solutions/digitalmedia/index.jsp
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/

etc. It's a form of load-balancing that's not transparent to the users, that's all.

[JoshuaZ]

Well, that explains a lot now.

[xGrape]

It's really just what is also known as a sub-domain. Have a peek in your address bar right now, and you'll hopefully see forums.macnn.com. When you wish to get to the main page of a site, it will be enough to just type the domain (macnn.com) most of the time. However, most sites will also work with the www. as the sub-domain. This kind of identification was introduced alongside the world wide web (i think), as a means to distinguish various parts of the server, for various uses. Like, mail.domain.com is the sub for the mail-part of the server, ftp.domain.com would be the one used for ftp requests, and then www.domain.com for the www website. Since the www is what most people try to reach when sending a request for a domain, it is often simply discarded nowadays though.

[Corpse of Chewbacca]

I know how to answer this.

[Love Calm Quiet]

Originally Posted by xGrape

It's really just what is also known as a sub-domain. Have a peek in your address bar right now, and you'll hopefully see forums.macnn.com.

Thanks, xGrape...
THAT makes sense. So, just as I could get a subdomain called subdomain.mydomain.com, I could also establish a www3.mydomain.com .
Then it's not really a different aspect of the web, just of a particular domain's server...
BEEG difference.
Gracias

[phantomdragonz]

wow, I never knew that... thats some cool info!

Zach

[dcmacdaddy]

Like others have said, it is about sub-domains and load-balancing which provides an organization a high degree of reliability and accessibility for their web sites.

For internal e-mail connectivity my work uses a single website that sits outside of our firewall. The switch on the inside of the firewall routes the incoming traffic to one of two internal servers that actually provide the connectivity and interface for our web-mail service. This type of load-balancing, which guarantees staff quick connectivity also has the added benefit of providing built-in backup capability. If one of our web-mail servers fails or needs to be taken down for service the other one can handle all the incoming traffic (albeit more slowly).

[Love Calm Quiet]

DrMacDaddy,
To further feed my curiousity, does a SUBdomain necessarily have to be on a different server?
(I've not set up a server - or a subdomain for that matter).
I'm not even clear if all of one domain must be on one physical unit. Consider Amazon, for example... or maybe not them (would that size operation be on a mainframe?) But sites of several gigs - might they multiple PCs to divide up even one SUBdomain? or even email?

[Demonhood]

a subdomain can be on the same box, or a server across the country. and with load balancing, various services can be on different boxes within the same domain. or even routing, say, various web traffic to a different box based on the server load.

we could have fantastic.macnn.com that houses a webpage, and is hosted from a mac mini in peru. but the same logs from that sub-domain could go to another box altogether. in, let's say, new zealand.

[ReggieX]

Originally Posted by Love Calm Quiet

DrMacDaddy,
To further feed my curiousity, does a SUBdomain necessarily have to be on a different server?

Nope! Our company has www.DOMAIN and secure.DOMAIN on the exact same server, but using the secure. version enables SSL encryption for form data. Same IP, same physical server.

[dcmacdaddy]

Originally Posted by Love Calm Quiet

DrMacDaddy,
To further feed my curiousity, does a SUBdomain necessarily have to be on a different server?
(I've not set up a server - or a subdomain for that matter).
I'm not even clear if all of one domain must be on one physical unit. Consider Amazon, for example... or maybe not them (would that size operation be on a mainframe?) But sites of several gigs - might they multiple PCs to divide up even one SUBdomain? or even email?

I am not a Dr. (but I play one on tv).

As Demonhood and ReggieX pointed out there is NO requirement for domains and sub-domains to reside on the same server hardware or even in the same physical or geographic space.


The things to remember about computers, switches, printers, the Internet/WWW and other networked computing devices is that you always have a physical entity and a logical entity to "represent" every computing device.

Now the logical entity is just that, a logical conception of a computing device or chunk of cyberspace, let's say a web server called "www.dennis.com". Now, this logical entity can have one or more-than-one physical entity that "represents" it in the real world. "www.dennis.com" could reside on one server in one specific web-hosting center in one specific country. But, it could also reside on multiple servers in one specific web-hosting center or it could reside on multiple servers in multiple web-hosting centers (in the same town or halfway around the world). But, it would still be "www.dennis.com" regardless of how it was implemented in the physical world. It's logical conception is NOT dependent in any way on its physical conception.

IMHO, this duality--The ability to distinguish between the logical conception of something and its physical conception--is the key idea that has helped the Internet and WWW become the huge technological apparatus it has become today.

[macroy]

This may help:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-server.htm
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dns.htm