PDA

View Full Version : www8 address instead of www


vehemoth
August 28th, 2011, 02:29 AM
This is weird, I went to visit the HP website and it redirected me to a URL starting with www8
http://www8.hp.com/nz/en/home.html
dniMretsaM
August 28th, 2011, 02:31 AM
That's about the oddest thing I've seen today.
IWantFroyo
August 28th, 2011, 02:33 AM
I've seen this before, but only with HP's websites.

This is the weirdest HP one I've seen so far:
h41112.www4.hp.com
coolbrook
August 28th, 2011, 02:38 AM
A subdomain likely to relieve the load or to target your geo location or both.
Barrucadu
August 28th, 2011, 02:51 AM
Some busy sites have several servers operating under different subdomains, and you get redirected to one of them when you first load the site.
juancarlospaco
August 28th, 2011, 03:43 AM
Its the Upcomming IPv8.

Just kidding :P
sujoy
August 28th, 2011, 05:47 AM
Its just a sub-domain. Whats so weird about it!
vehemoth
August 28th, 2011, 06:12 AM
Its just a sub-domain. Whats so weird about it!
I've just never seen it done before.
Here's a bit of an explanation https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Subdomain#Server_cluster
hewbert
August 28th, 2011, 06:53 AM
Not unusual at all, actually. Another reason you might see this, which I doubt is the motive behind HP's setup, is parallel downloads. See http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/parallel/ for a little information on that.


So most web browsers are effectively throttled by this limit on parallel downloads if the objects in the web page they download are hosted on one hostname.


So if you have a single web server, e.g. www.example.com, you can assign other CNAMEs to it (e.g. www1, www2, ...) and reference them for content in your site to parallelize downloads, adding a potential performance benefit.
sffvba[e0rt
August 28th, 2011, 08:39 AM
I guess not everyone has been using the Internet for that long...


404
haqking
August 28th, 2011, 10:39 AM
it is normal.

They probably have 8 or more servers running www services for load balancing or failover etc.

It is common for web servers to be numbered with a digit after the www service.

just a subdomain, looks like www8 is New Zealand
Artemis3
August 29th, 2011, 05:56 PM
The subdomain word can be anything you want, it has no obligatory significance.
snip3r8
August 29th, 2011, 07:29 PM
Its the Upcomming IPv8.

Just kidding :P

pity i was hoping for md5 style IPs
aaaantoine
August 29th, 2011, 09:50 PM
The important, crucial, unwavering part of the URL is hp.com/. Everything else is just fluff.

the www subdomain is common, but not required. For instance, the URL of this thread is

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1834677

No www.

Just as long as you're not visiting www8.hp.ebilhackarsitez89.net (or .ru, .cn, .nz, and so forth).