Web Addresses, Research Paper Example

Website addresses are also known by a more appropriate term URL which stands for Uniform Resource Locator (URL) (Farlex). Website addresses or URLs allow us to access documents and other resources on the internet from anywhere in the world. The URL was developed by Tim Berners-Lee and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) URI working group in 1994 (Webopedia).

The information contained in the URL includes the internet name of the website containing the resource, the type of service being used to provide the resource, the internet port number of the service, and the location of the resource in the directory structure of the server. The URL scheme also allows a query string that can be passed to the designated URL. This is done by placing a question mark at the end of the URL, followed by the desired query string (University of Toronto).

Each website is hosted at a web server which can be identified by a unique numerical address known as the IP address. Since IP addresses consist of digits only and are difficult to remember, domain names were introduced in 1985 to address the problem. Each domain name is registered with an ICANN-approved domain registrar and each domain registrar maintains a database of the domain names registered with it along with the hosting servers. All of this information is stored in Domain Name System (DNS) servers and when a user enters the URL for a particular website, the DNS server provides the browser with the correct IP address. The browser uses the IP address provided by the DNS server to interact with the web server hosting the website (Website Gear, 2004).

References

Farlex. (n.d.). universal resource locator. Retrieved April 1, 2012, from The Free Dictionary: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/universal+resource+locator

University of Toronto. (n.d.). Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). Retrieved April 1, 2012, from http://www.utoronto.ca/web/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/url.html

Webopedia. (n.d.). URL. Retrieved April 1, 2012, from http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/U/URL.html

Website Gear. (2004, January 8). Retrieved April 8, 2012, from http://content.websitegear.com/article/domain_name.htm