OT question: URLs

[tinkthank]

This is me not understanding something, sorry, you are the only people I know who understand computers. So here goes:

Do I understand correctly that every "address" you can have in the "internet" is really just a mnemnotechnical shortcut to a numerical "URL", so that anything www.blahblahblah etc. will translate into a 16-digit number?
Is it also true that every single computer with a connection to the "internet" via a modem or whatever also has a unique URL number? (Or is that IP and IP is different?)
If the above is correct (maybe it is more or less digits?), then isnt the number of internet addresses /computer IPs that can be given pretty finite? I mean, in like 10 years or whatever, wont all of the numbers be gone?
Thanks for helping me understand this.

[archaeolept]

"URL" is the alphanumeric address, like www.yoyoyo.com/yo/123.htm, which translates into a specific IP of the server or the router in question, by going through a domain name server (?). Or, actually, in the example above, the URL would translate to an IP for www.yoyoyo.com through likely a domain name server of your ISP's, which would send the request to yoyoyo.com's server, which would further internally route it to the /yo/123.htm webpage.

i think

try running the ping command for a domain name and it will resolve it to it's IP.

[Arralen]

www.illwinter.com is "212.247.198.180" in reality, out of the number range from "0.0.0.0" to "255.255.255.255". But not all of those are available .. e.g. 127.0.0.1 is always you local machine.

Yes, we may be running out of these 4-group adresses anytime not so soon, so a new numbering is just about to be implemented: IP4 changes to IP6 .. I'm shure the technical details do not bother you that much, do they?

[tinkthank]

Ah, right -- thanks, so I did get it right then? No, the tech details I wont understand anyhow, but that they are changing the IP system -- that makes sense. Thanks!

PS. like your sig arralen

[lebarjack]

If you want a good headeache, you can read the Request For Comment at this... er.. URL : RFC 1738

URL stand for Uniform Ressource Locator and are in the form :
<proto>//<user>:<password>@<host>:<port>/<url-path>

The host part is an alphanumerical name for a computer.
ie : www.shrapnelcommunity.com
This hostname is associated with a numerical IP address and resolved each time you want to access a ressource on the net.

When you type an URL in your navigator, it query first a distributed database which know all host/IP association and 'replace' it in the URL.

There is an IP number starvation which will be adressed by the new Version of Internet Protocol (IPv6) and give enough numerical address for the fifty years to come.

It is a real necessity for emergent country as china or india who arrived late on the internet, at a time where most of the IP were attributed principaly to the USA, and in a lesser extent, european countries.

Phew, at least i was able to give some information on this board, but not about dom2

[Esben Mose Hansen]

tinkthank said:
This is me not understanding something, sorry, you are the only people I know who understand computers. So here goes:

Do I understand correctly that every "address" you can have in the "internet" is really just a mnemnotechnical shortcut to a numerical "URL", so that anything www.blahblahblah etc. will translate into a 16-digit number?
Is it also true that every single computer with a connection to the "internet" via a modem or whatever also has a unique URL number? (Or is that IP and IP is different?)
If the above is correct (maybe it is more or less digits?), then isnt the number of internet addresses /computer IPs that can be given pretty finite? I mean, in like 10 years or whatever, wont all of the numbers be gone?
Thanks for helping me understand this.

As other have stated, the URL a translated into a number, which is actually 32 bits, but usually wirtten like 123.123.123.123. You can actually enter http://80.161.86.108/ and get (in this case) my home page. You got the right The translation is done via a DNS database, which is a mderately complicated system that you don't have to worry about :-) (Askl if you want to know anyway).

But every internet user does not have a permanent address. Many (the majority) either get one from a dynamic pool (this is common with *DSL) or share a single IP address via a firewall (common in corporate networks.). That is why we havn't quite run out yet --- I believe it will be another 10 years or so before we do at the current rate, though I don't know. You can google for it if you *really* want to know.

[Gandalf Parker]

Basically the answer to everything you asked is "yes"

You might not want to go any further into it though since it gets pretty messed up.

The physical routing type of address for my machine is 63.199.8.158. You can see my default web page by putting http://63.199.8.158 into a browser. You can send me email to gandalf@[63.199.8.158]

That also translates to a long number of 1070008478. You can go to http://1070008478 and send me email at gandalf@[1070008478]

It was originally adsl-63-199-8-158.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net and that works as http://adsl-63-199-8-158.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net and as [email protected] also altho the web page is just a place holder.

I have www.dom2minions.com, www.alt-hacker.org, www.sdmud.org, www.techno-mage.com, and www.shadowdale.org (some others I forget) pointed to that machine. If you type those into a browser it looks up the DNS and gets an address of 63.199.8.158 (my web server sees the incoming address and shows the correct page). And you can send me email to gandalf@ any of those. A domain name is portable, the IP pretty much is not. Think of it as the difference between Gandalf Parker living at 1214 Balsam Way. The name might change but the physical address doesnt move around easily.

Now the fun part, reverse lookup. A whole different set of servers handle the IP to name lookup. There can be many names pointed to an IP but an IP can only have one name associated with it so a reverse lookup of my IP says that 63.199.8.158 is actually alt-hacker.org

Want more fun? Mac addresses. More fun? IPV6. More fun? DHCP

By the way, dont look too hard for logic in all of this. The growth of the Internet had less in common with engineering,
planning and design. And more in common with chaos theory, big bang expanding universe, and the theory of evolution.

[Arryn]

Gandalf Parker said:
And more in common with chaos theory, big bang expanding universe, and the theory of evolution.

Not to draw this OT, but your analogy is seriously skewed. For instance, evolution is about the forces of "natural selection", often deemed by laypersons as "survival of the fittest" (the actual subject is far more complex than that), to which the growth of the 'net has had little to do with some "selection of the best technologies". All too often, the technologies that come to dominate in the industry are far from the best that were under development. Most often, it's politics and power plays by various large corporations (as well as universities and government entities) that determine the course of the net's growth.

Next on your list (working backwards) is the Big Bang. The cause of the Bang is now thought to have been caused by a quantum instability, and the initial hyperinflationary expansion in the first tiny fraction of a microsecond another (very complex) quantum effect. None of which have any relation to the growth of the internet, not even by way of analogy. I won't bore you with the mathematics of the cosmology, but such math is fairly remote from the far more readily understood statistical concepts that underlie the growth of such things as the net, national populations, etc.

Finally, chaos theory relates more to describing the activity of the net, rather than its growth. The growth itself isn't a true chaotic process. It just might appear that way. It's actually quite predictable by non-chaos math.

The accurate statement you made is in regards to the growth not being an engineering / architectural process. It's a socio-political process.

[Ivan Pedroso]

Arryn said:
Not to draw this OT

Then why did you ?!?

(I couldn't resist it - sorry)

[Arryn]

Ivan Pedroso said:
(I couldn't resist it - sorry)

Then you should understand. Neither could I.