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I know it's basic

  1. #1
    Admin African Astronaut
    What's the purpose of having a . in a domain name?

    For instance...

    kr0z.com
    bill.kr0z.com
    kr0z.bill.com
    bill.kr0z.by.com
    kro0z.bill.by.com

    What's the difference? What does it mean?

    Also, what is with 'www2'?...

    www2.kr0z.com
    www.kr0z.com

    Are they the same? Is the 'www' even needed?
  2. #2
    gadzooks Dark Matter [keratinize my mild-tasting blossoming]
    In the example www.google.com:

    www is the hostname.
    google is the domain name.
    com is the top-level domain name.

    You can have all kinds of variations on this same pattern, but ultimately it comes down to a SINGLE domain name registered to a SINGLE top-level domain name (usually denoting country of origin, or .net, .org, .edu, or even novelty ones like .space or .sex).

    The initial hostname portion can vary quite a bit.

    You can stick to the standard www, or you can have, say, mail.google.com, or books.google.com, etc.

    Or you can even leave it out altogether (as you see in niggasin.space).
    The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
  3. #3
    But wait about the dot??? You didn’t answer the OP’s most important question!
  4. #4
    GGG victim of incest [my veinlike two-fold aepyornidae]
    Httpsniggasinspacethread35046
  5. #5
    -SpectraL coward [the spuriously bluish-lilac bushman]
    It doesn't really matter what you name it, as long as it translates to a number. The domain is just the label. Even the number is just a label. It's just a way people can communicate and understand each other. The domain name, or its format, even the dot, is not even really required by the machine, as long as it has the number. The name is merely to make it user-friendly, nothing more.
  6. #6
    gadzooks Dark Matter [keratinize my mild-tasting blossoming]
    Okay, it's analogy time...

    Say you have a physical address as follows:

    1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
    Washington, DC, USA

    In order to route someone to that particular address, you first start with the "top-level domain" (in this case, "USA").
    To sustain the DNS metaphor, we'll consider wa.dc.usa to be series of top-level domain identifiers.

    Now, the actual building's physical address is analogous to the domain name.

    So let's call it 1600-pennsylvania-ave-nw.wa.dc.usa.

    But what if you want to rent out a room in the White House (lol)...

    Then they might get their own suite called Apartment B.

    So you could then start dividing that domain up into multiple hosts...

    http://ovaloffice.1600-pennsylvania-ave-nw.wa.dc.usa for official presidential matters.
    http://apartmentb.1600-pennsylvania-ave-nw.wa.dc.usa for the skater bum renting a room to blog about skate parks and whatnot.

    Does that help at all?

    I just did a few bumps of ketamine and I might be WAAAAAYYYYYY off on a tangent.
  7. #7
    But why does it have to have a dot to separate each part
  8. #8
    Why couldn’t it be a comma or some shit
  9. #9
    gadzooks Dark Matter [keratinize my mild-tasting blossoming]
    Originally posted by Methuselah But why does it have to have a dot to separate each part

    That's just a convention.

    They could have used exclamation marks or question marks or freaking emojis if they wanted to.

    You need some kind of symbol to instruct the browser and DNS services how to parse a particular URL.
  10. #10
    GGG victim of incest [my veinlike two-fold aepyornidae]
    Originally posted by Methuselah Why couldn’t it be a comma or some shit

    It has largely to do with the airspeed velocity of the unladen swallow
  11. #11
    Ok well then I think that’s all the questions answered. Thank you gadzooks for breaking your hiatus/sabbatical or whatever the fuck to come answer our readers’ burning questions!
    The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
  12. #12
    gadzooks Dark Matter [keratinize my mild-tasting blossoming]
    Originally posted by Methuselah Ok well then I think that’s all the questions answered. Thank you gadzooks for breaking your hiatus/sabbatical or whatever the fuck to come answer our readers’ burning questions!

    It's a quasi-hiatus. I pop in from time to time.

    I've started paying especial attention to this subforum though because I like talking just about anything computer science or programming related.
  13. #13
    gadzooks Dark Matter [keratinize my mild-tasting blossoming]
    Originally posted by Methuselah Why couldn’t it be a comma or some shit

    Usually this type of thing simply comes down to whatever was posited (and implemented) first.

    Now, if we wanna have some real fun with URL parsing, we could get into Base64 encoding, HTTP request types and their respective parameter encoding, cookies, sessions, SSL/TSL handshakes, alternative protocols to HTTP(S), etc, etc, etc.
  14. #14
    Soyboy V: A Cat-Girl/Boy Under Every Bed African Astronaut [my no haunted nonbeing]
    For, lets say, www.totse.com the thought process went something like this.

    .com would be the DNS computer.

    totse would be the company registered with that DNS computer.

    www. would be a computer at the company - like the computer that served http.

    Dots were chosen I guess as they were used in the decimal system in most countries, for instance $10.00
  15. #15
    -SpectraL coward [the spuriously bluish-lilac bushman]
    http://%6e%69%67%67%61%73%69%6e%2e%73%70%61%63%65
  16. #16
    Bologna Nacho African Astronaut
    Now my brain hurts reading this thread.
  17. #17
    -SpectraL coward [the spuriously bluish-lilac bushman]
    http://2899902894
  18. #18
    Admin African Astronaut
    So is the 'www' necessary?

    Is it just for looks?
  19. #19
    gadzooks Dark Matter [keratinize my mild-tasting blossoming]
    Originally posted by Admin So is the 'www' necessary?

    Is it just for looks?

    Its not strictly necessary, but it does serve a purpose.

    E.g. If you want to distinguish between the search engine (www.google.com) and the Google mail (mail.google.com).

    But www is just the default host for any given domain, so you dont have to actually refer to it.
  20. #20
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    Originally posted by MORALLY SUPERIOR BEING V: A Cat-Girl/Boy Under Every Bed .com would be the DNS computer.

    For the sake of understanding this is reasonable, but it's not like different TLDs have different DNS servers or anything. Any general purpose DNS server will service lookups on any TLD and the authority that assigns domains is different than those that run DNS servers.

    Originally posted by Admin So is the 'www' necessary?

    Is it just for looks?

    DNS predates HTTP, when early web servers were being set up it was common to put web servers on a different machine and point the www subdomain to it. Since these days most people buy domains primarily to host an HTTP server on them, it's become more and more common to drop the www part since it's the main service on the domain. Some places still do the www thing just for legacy purposes but I would be 100% fine if the convention just died tomorrow.
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