Web Addresses

Domain Names and Internet Addresses

This information is part of your internet connection so if you check the status of your connection, you will likely see your IP addresses. 

For example, in Windows XP, if you right click on the Internet Connection Icon on the Task Bar and then Left click on "Status", a pop up display will show you your connection speed and your computer's IP address. 

Your IP address is assigned to you by your Internet Service Provider. Your computer may have the same IP address every time you log on to the Internet (static), but in most cases, these numbers are dynamic. So the number always changes.

Although you can't access the web without an IP address, you can obscure it. One of the best ways to do so is via a proxy service. A proxy sits between your computer and the Internet and the online world only sees the IP address of the proxy server.

The problem with IP addresses is that they are very hard for people to remember.

In the 1980s, a system of Internet Addresses or Domain Names, also referred to as URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) was developed which made remembering addresses considerably easier than the numeric IP address.  

A basic URL has three parts, for example, www.senate.gov is:

1. The World Wide Web (www) name for
2. The United States Senate (.senate)
3. Which is a government agency (.gov).

Your IP address is given away constantly as you surf the Web. Each link you click on is a request for a Web page and the Web server that responds to you needs a return address.

Website Addresses

Websites also have IP addresses and they usually stay constant. 

An example would be the IP address of Google, or www.google.com which is 216.239.37.104.  You can locate a Website using the IP numeric address, instead of the URL of the site.  If you enter the Google IP address into the address bar of your Web browser, it should find Google's Site, just as it would, if you would have used the URL. 

It is possible for a website address to change.  A Website could be renamed and this would change the URL or if a Website is moved from one computer server to another, then the IP address would change.

In either case, if the Web developer will want you to be able to find the new site or new name, so they will set up a redirect to get you to the new location.

Moving Web Information

The information stored in the numerous computer networks connected to the Internet forms an enormous electronic library.  The downside to this is that the sheer size of the network and the amount of data involved creates a formidable challenge in trying to find and retrieve data so a number of user tools were created to make the task easier. 

These tools are called Search Engines, such as Google, Yahoo, Archie, Gopher, and many others.  These search engines use proprietary algorithms to search a large collection of documents for keywords and return a list of documents containing one or more of the keywords.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is the language used to transfer information between computers in different networks.

In the next section, Different Kinds of Websites, I'll talk about some things you should know about Websites before you set up yours.

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