[AusNOG] Incorrect DNS setup

[Steve Skeevens]

Hi Karl,

A little known fact is that the 'www' hostname was invented by Tim
Berners-Lee as a way of making some of the money that he might have made if
he had thought to patent HTTP and HTML.  Tim petitioned the IETF to have
'www' written into various standards documents.  The Netcraft survey was
instituted to count how many 'www' hostnames were being used and by who, so
that Tim could collect the $1 annual per-name 'web tax' from the
communications regulators of the countries in which the sites were hosted.
The regulators pass the tax on to the hosting providers, who include it as
part of your hosting fees (try asking for a REAL itemised bill next billing
period!).  Smart web hosters use load balancing solutions behind a single
hostname (ie: without 'www2', 'www3', etc) to save money on the web tax.

Unfortunately, some ignorant and/or shifty operators seek to cheat the web
tax, and do not use 'www'.  I feel this comes down to the watering-down of
IT degrees and insufficient industry mentoring.  We really need to maintain
standards.

Regards,
Steve

On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 10:16 AM, Karl Kloppenborg <karl at karltec.net> wrote:

> Hey Noggers,
>
> Firstly I would like to apologise for going a-wall postal on you all
> yesterday... and a big thanks to those who off list posted me to discuss
> last mile setups and what not, and generally giving me a helping
> knowledgeable hand :)
>
> So heres my post for today:
>
> Very frequently I trawl around and go to peoples websites (especially when
> I see an email on ausnog with a domain I haven't been to attached to it ;P
> )
>
> I have done this again this morning and it got me thinking, how come a lot
> of people have these two cases:
>
> A) I navigate to blah.com.au and is goes "can't connect to this server" I
> append www. to the domain (it ends up being www.blah.com.au) and I get
> their website.
>
> or
>
> B)The reverse of this, I navigate to www.blah.com.au and it says "Can't
> connect to server", but I go to blah.com.au and it is all cool.
>
> What I am wondering is:
>
> A) Why do people leave have these cases?
>
> B) Where did the use of appending www. to the front of things originate
> from?
>
> C) also I see sometimes www1. or www2. on some websites, can someone
> explain these to me?
>
>
> Thanks guys,
> Hope your all having a nice monday morning.
> *
> Cheers!
> Karl Kloppenborg*
>
>
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>
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