Is "www" desirable in web site URL?

[Peter Murray]

I'd guess what Netscape is doing is first checking the Domain Name Service
(DNS) for 'albany.edu', and if it does not find an address (A-record) or an
alias (CNAME-record), it tries 'www.albany.edu'.  A quick look at the DNS
reveals:

  > host albany.edu
  albany.edu has address 169.226.1.21
  
  > host www.albany.edu
  www.albany.edu is a nickname for rebecca.albany.edu
  rebecca.albany.edu has address 128.204.1.109 
  rebecca.albany.edu mail is handled (pri=10) by sarah.albany.edu

Since 'albany.edu' has an address record in the DNS and has a web server on
port 80, it gueses that "http://albany.edu" is what you really meant when you
typed "albany.edu" in the Location line.  And since "albany.edu" and
"www.albany.edu" point to different addresses, you see the behavior you
describe.


Peter

On Fri, 13 Sep 1996, Laura B. Cohen wrote:
> I'm not so sure you can always leave off "www" in the URL when
> you're using Netscape. (I'm on 3.0 for Windows 3.1).
> 
> My university's home page is www.albany.edu. When I just point
> the browser to "albany.edu," I get to a forwarding page set up
> last year, pointing to the new university home page. I need to
> type "www.albany.edu" to get to the current page.
> 
>   -- Laura Cohen
> 


--
Peter Murray, Library Systems Manager                      pem at po.cwru.edu
Library Information Technologies         http://www.cwru.edu/home/pem.html
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio            W:216-368-8989