Domain Name Question - how come some domains have www., others don't?

TreMetal

Member
Aug 13, 2002
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It is basically like how people do: basketball.espn.com or baseball.espn.com.. the www is just like basketball or baseball in those two..
 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
42,936
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Its a DNS thing. www used to matter more than it does now, but some admins are still lazy.
 

Kevin

Diamond Member
Jan 1, 2002
3,995
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It depends on how the network is set up. Sometimes, the address missing the www is for internal users...
 

NogginBoink

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
5,322
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The domain name is companyname.com.

WWW is the name of the machine in the companyname.com domain.

When you go to http://companyname.com, you're essentially asking for the IP address of the domain, not for a machine within that domain.

However, DNS can return an IP address for the domain if an entry is set up in the zone.

Most domains (mine included) put the same IP address for both companyname.com and www.companyname.com.

And that, superwormy, is the rule. The only way to know whether or not it'll work is to try it. It all depends on whether or not the DNS admin has entered host (or CNAME) entries for companyname.com in the zone.