# what is www2s ? (internet address names) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 6, 2005, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676 "2005-05-06T13:04:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2005, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/1 "2005-05-06T13:04:52Z")
I thought all web sites started with www. Most of the time, it is enough to say, for example, “nytimes dot com” and we all know that you have to type www before the address. But this link starts “www2s.” What does it mean? Is the web getting more complex, and will I have to start remembering which prefix to type? [http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~pennywiz/Funhouse/gilliganE.html](http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~pennywiz/Funhouse/gilliganE.html) And whatever happened to the proposed web addresses that would end in “dot biz” or “dot info” ? (by the way, the link is to a very funny song parody-- the theme song from Gilligan’s Island TV show, set to the music of Led Zeplin’s “Stairway to Heaven”.) ---
**Author:** ![Noone\_Special](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/noone_special/32/2863_2.png) [@Noone\_Special](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noone_Special)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2005, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/2 "2005-05-06T13:18:21Z")
It’s been a looong time since web sites **had** to start with “www”. The marker of a web site now (and, I may add, for at least ten years) is that its URL begins with “http://”. Of course, we never see this because web browsers supply the “http://” prefix automatically. For example, you are right now browsing [http://boards.straightdope.com](http://boards.straightdope.com). No “www” in the URL There is _no way_ to get directly to this site through a “www” URL. Dani ---
**Author:** ![SpaceDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spacedog/32/9932_2.png) [@SpaceDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpaceDog)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2005, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/3 "2005-05-06T13:49:34Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > And whatever happened to the proposed web addresses that would end in “dot biz” or “dot info” ? Oh, they’re around. I.e. [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/](http://www.gamesindustry.biz/) or [http://www.microbes.info/](http://www.microbes.info/) ( I picked the first two google threw up … ) People don’t view them as as ‘classy’ or easy to remember as the others. There’s some more info (and a list of other Top Level Domains, as they’re called) [here](http://www.icann.org/tlds/). SD ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2005, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/4 "2005-05-06T13:50:32Z")
.biz and .info do exist, but they aren’t really taking off and are often used by spammers or scam artists. The “www” was always just a convenience. When websites were created, the colleges used “www” in the URL to specify that the particular server was World Wide Web. Quick and easy to remember. But there is no need for it to be “www,” or for any prefix at all. Most websites are configured so you reach them without “www.” ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2005, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/5 "2005-05-06T13:54:53Z")
There’s really two parts of a web address: the part that the outside world uses to identify the site, and the part that the site itself uses to define different documents. Kind of like a real address such as “Financial Manager, Division of Silly Walks, Acme Products, 123 Fake St, Springfield 00001”. The “123 Fake St…00001” part is defined by the Post Office, and is how mail gets to Acme from the outside world. But the “Financial Manager, Division of Silly Walks” part is made up by Acme. They could just as easily ask you to send the mail to “Larry the Walk Guy” or something. The point of this is that in a web address, such as “[www.nytimes.com/login](http://www.nytimes.com/login)”, the “[nytimes.com](http://nytimes.com)” part is like the street address – it’s defined by the internet post office-equivalent, and is how mail gets to the server. The “www.” part is actually defined by the Times’s server. The Times could just as easily have set it up to be “[subscribers.nytimes.com](http://subscribers.nytimes.com)” or “[newsfornonilluminati.nytimes.com](http://newsfornonilluminati.nytimes.com)” (with of course “[therealnews.nytimes.com](http://therealnews.nytimes.com)” also existing". It’s just that early on, everyone decided to use www. as the place to take web traffic (as opposed to say “[mail.nytimes.com](http://mail.nytimes.com)” which might be the place for the e-mail server). Since almost everybody used it, most browsers were set up to mak e it easier for people by also checking for a www. server. ---
**Author:** ![butler1850](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@butler1850](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/butler1850)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2005, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/6 "2005-05-06T14:03:47Z")
Another note, often you connect through _[www.domain.com](http://www.domain.com),_ which means that you are connecting to a server named _www_ in an address block named _[domain.com](http://domain.com)_. As a simple (or part of a very complex) method of load balancing (spreading work out over many machines to keep response times reasonable), they will often redirect you to a machine named _www2,_ or _www3_, or \*overflow \* or _whatever_ in an address block named [domain.com](http://domain.com). The actual “where” of where you go when you type \*[www.domain.com](http://www.domain.com) \* or just \*[domain.com](http://domain.com) \* is set by the administrator that handles addressing (DNS) for that domain. Just like the old tale about skinning cats, there is more than one way to do this too. -Butler ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2005, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/7 "2005-05-06T14:25:50Z")
When you type “[www.verizon.com](http://www.verizon.com)” into a browser, it automatically changes into [www22.verizon.com](http://www22.verizon.com). I have no idea why. ---
**Author:** ![butler1850](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@butler1850](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/butler1850)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2005, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/8 "2005-05-06T14:38:45Z")
> [@Patty O'Furniture](#): > > When you type “[www.verizon.com](http://www.verizon.com)” into a browser, it automatically changes into [www22.verizon.com](http://www22.verizon.com). I have no idea why. As explained in my post above yours, it was redirected to a machine designated to respond to www22. If everyone was on one machine, (www) you’d not get your page loaded before your browser timed out. ---
**Author:** ![butler1850](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@butler1850](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/butler1850)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2005, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/9 "2005-05-06T14:41:27Z")
Or… for a less snarky answer :smack: , look [here](http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question342.htm) for a basic explanation which is better than my off the cuff ramblings. ---
**Author:** ![Kizarvexius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/da6949/32.png) [@Kizarvexius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kizarvexius)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2005, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/10 "2005-05-06T17:40:45Z")
Major WAG: A domain starting with www2 might link you to something on Internet2, a smaller but more powerful network set aside for academia and scientific research. This was, of course, the same group of intrepid souls who created the original internet, which eventually got hijacked by commercialism. So they started all over again with a new network which (they hope) will remain more exclusive. As the WAG warning indicates, however, the www2 may be completely unrelated. ---
**Author:** ![buttonjockey308](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@buttonjockey308](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buttonjockey308)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2005, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/11 "2005-05-06T18:12:22Z")
So you’re saying it WASN’T Al Gore then? Facist! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2005, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/12 "2005-05-08T19:35:36Z")
The thing to realize is that the Web is not all of the Internet. The Internet existed first; the Web is just one of many ways to use the Internet (another common one is e-mail, for instance). So, let’s look at the situation at, say, a major university, when the Web caught on. They’re already on the Internet. They have a mail server (a computer that handles their e-mails), which might be called something like mail.university.edu. They probably have an FTP server (FTP is a method of transferring files over the Internet), which might be called ftp.university.edu. They might have a gopher server (gopher was an Internet protocol vaguely similar to the Web, but it came first, and it never caught on as big as the Web did). They can give all of these separate servers whatever name they want; they could call their mail server “fred.university.edu” and their FTP server “bert.university.edu” if they liked; they just give them names like “mail” and “ftp” for convenience. Now, the World Wide Web comes along, and so they set up a server for that, too. They’re not going to call it just “university.edu”, since that’s part of the address for all of their Internet servers, and there’s no reason just yet to suppose that the Web is special. So they pick a name for their new Web server. It so happens that most of them chose to call it www dot whatever, but that wasn’t the only choice: MIT, for instance (who were predictably one of the first to get on board with the Internet and the Web), has the server [http://web.mit.edu](http://web.mit.edu) (actually, they now have www also, to keep from confusing folks, but for a while it was just web.mit.edu). And some places have random names like fred, or names descriptive of the content rather than the protocol, like boards. Nowadays, of course, the Web is by far the largest protocol for using the Internet, so now many Internet sites are set up to assume the Web by default. So if you go to [google.com](http://google.com) (with no www), for instance, you’ll get the Google web page, not a Google ftp server or the like. But there’s no inherent reason that has to be the case, just the fact that Google has set it up that way. ---
**Author:** ![drewbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drewbert/32/15890_2.png) [@drewbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewbert)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2005, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/13 "2005-05-08T20:13:24Z")
> [@Kizarvexius](#): > > Major WAG: > > A domain starting with www2 might link you to something on Internet2, a smaller but more powerful network set aside for academia and scientific research. I was about to post that Internet 2 wouldn’t be available to mere mortals, but I decided to do a little fact-checking before I posted. In fact, it appears that Internet 2 isn’t a network at all, just a [consortium of universities](http://www.internet2.edu/about/) working on the future of the internet. Nothing about a separate network, which I always thought. (The wikipedia [entry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_2) on it is a bit clearer on the confusion) ---
**Author:** ![drewbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drewbert/32/15890_2.png) [@drewbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewbert)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2005, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/14 "2005-05-08T20:18:17Z")
Then again, I could be wrong about that. At the least there seems to be a little confusion over the name. [http://internet2.njit.edu/faq.html](http://internet2.njit.edu/faq.html) [sub]repeat after me… wiki is not a source… wiki is not a source[/sub] [/Hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2005, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-www2s-internet-address-names/302676/15 "2005-05-08T21:29:37Z")
> [@drewbert](#): > > I was about to post that Internet 2 wouldn’t be available to mere mortals, but I decided to do a little fact-checking before I posted. Do people still believe those rumours on the internets? 😉