I will tell you my understanding, and you might not want to check the www box
if I am correct. But whatever works best for you...
"
www.domain.com" refers to a computer named "www" in the domain named
"domain.com" This was originally the way to precisely target the computer in
any given domain that would support the http protocol. A router between that
domain and the internet, which would route your connection anyway, could also
be programmed to send you to ANY computer in the domain based on any number
of factors. For example, if you intiated a connection with the http
protocol, the router could connect you with the www computer or any other —
in fact, it can do this regardless of the computer you specified. It can
refuse to let you connect at all based on who YOU are, and it can redirect
you anywhere as well.
Likewise, there often used to be a computer named "ftp" where the ftp server
was installed. But this was simply a practice, and I don't believe there
ever were any RFC's (specs) that recommended the practice. And of course, we
often see computers with names like mail.domain.com or pop3.domain.com or
smtp.domain.com, etc., that are the e-mail machines for a domain. So, the
practice is still observed many places to some extent.
If you put the "www" prefix on a website name, and they don't actually have
a computer by that name... or they don't redirect based on incoming port
number or protocol number... then YOU MIGHT NOT GET CONNECTED sometimes. I
know of numerous sites that will not connect you with www on the front.
This is trivia, but sometimes it matters. I NEVER would tell my browser to
add anything except maybe "http://" to what I type in the address bar.
Rarely do I have to add anything like the www.
Cheers,
Jim
