General Internet Questions

To help you better understand what the Internet is about, we have compiled some frequently asked questions (FAQ) to help you with some concepts that you may not be familiar with yet.
What is the World Wide Web?
The World Wide Web (www or w3) is a collection of online documents housed on Internet servers around the world. The concept of the Web was created by researchers at CERN in Switzerland. Web documents are written or coded in HTML. To access these documents, you have to use a Web browser, such as Netscape, Mosaic, or the Internet Explorer. When these browsers access (or hit) a page, the server uses the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to send the document to your computer.

What is a URL?
More commonly referred to as the URL, the Universal Resource Locator refers to the entire address that is recognized "universally" as the address for an Internet resource. Each resource on the Internet has a unique URL. URLs begin with letters that identify the resource type, such as http, ftp, gopher, etc. These types are followed by a colon and two slashes. Next, the computer's name is listed, followed by the directory and filename of the remote resource. For example, the URL for this page is http://www.Interlync.com/

What does the HTTP at the beginning of a URL stand for?
HTTP, or HyperText Transport Protocol, is the language that is used by the computer that hosts a web page when it talks to the Internet to transmit the page to your computer.

Why do Web addresses include the protocol, (i.e., http://www.Interlync.com instead of just www.Interlync.com) when most Web browsers will figure it out on their own?  ALL browsers these days do not require the http://.  They (Web Browsers) add them on there own.
 Not every browser will figure it out. Most everyone today uses either Netscape or Internet Explorer, but older tools like Lynx require this protocol "tag". In addition, some newer products like InContext's Web Analyzer need this tag as well. The browser will connect to a different port on a server depending on the protocol. Web pages are usually on port 80, and Gopher menus are on 70, which is why sometimes you'll see addresses written as http://www.biggiantcompany.com:80. Having the protocol tag at the beginning helps dumber browsers figure out where to connect.

Second, the address doesn't always include the protocol - you may know that guide.infoseek.com is a web address, but it's ambiguous without the protocol. Even addresses that seem to indicate one protocol may not. There are Web pages out there with addresses, oddly enough, like http://ftp.something.com. These are usually accessible both via a Web browser and through FTP software.

Finally, even if you don't have to specify the protocol tag, it is still an official part of the address, and so we include it for the sake of accuracy.