IP Addresses, Domain Names, and URLs OH MY!!!

IP Addresses, Domain Names, and URLS - OH MY!  What does it all mean and how does it fit into the puzzle of the WWW?  I certainly thought myself to be web savvy until reading Chapter 2 where I realized I was comfortable navigating but I didn't truly know what it all meant.

IP Address I had heard of because of Net Meeting and other applications at work.  the simple analogy in the book helps me understand the significance.  It's an address, literally like your street address USPS uses to deliver your mail.  The IP Address is simply put how information is sent to your computer.

Domain Names are much easier to understand it's basically the name for the IP Address of a server, also known as the website address.  For instance "blogger.com" is the name for the IP address of the server hosting the blogger websites. When using the domain name the computer is searching for the corresponding IP Address in order to locate the page.  Domain names must be unique in order to ensure they point to the right IP address therefore the domain must be registered similar to a trademark.  Naturally there is an organization that managed the registrations, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN).

Finally ther is the URL or the Uniform Resource Locator.  This could be easily described as the cookie crumbs which takes you from the domain name to the specifics within a page.  The first part of the URL is the protocol used to transmit the web page, the second is the domain name preceded normally by www.  additionally the URL can contain a path or a file name which drills down farther into a site.

Now that the pieces are put together and the puzzle is complete I'll be surfing on to the next assignment....