Ask HN: Why does a url use ://?

Re:Ask HN: Why does a url use ://? by jacquesm on Monday August 31, 2009 @04:19PM (#796633)

Yes, but there would be a couple of problems as well, specifically the DNS would need some major revamping. The DNS was already operational long before the web came along and it already used the '.' notation.

http:/com/test/www/someresource

and

http:/uk/co/test/www/someresource

Would have both been valid resources but it would be harder than now to figure out where the machine boundary is located.

You can't go by 'count' (because of subdomains) and you can't go by www either.

I think if they would have gone that route for practical reasons the // would have been 'reinvented', and it would probably be placed like this:

http:/com/ycombinator/news//some/path/resource.html

I'm not sure what the implications for phishing, certificates and humans interpreting URLs would have been in that situation either, but I know that I find it convenient to be able to fish the 'hostpart' out of a URL without further knowledge on my side.

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Re:Ask HN: Why does a url use ://? by rwmj on Monday August 31, 2009 @04:39PM (#796673)

Heh, when _I_ first started using the internet, domain names in the UK were "backwards". My first email address was:

[email protected]

In fact the first "domain names" I used were things like "lancs.pdsoft" but I think those were X.25 names, and the less said about X.25 the better.

At some point around '91 or '92 JANET reversed all the domain names to bring it into line with IETF standards. This caused some confusion with names beginning "cs." which could either be the Computer Science dept of some UK unversity, or a domain in the old Czechoslovakia.

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Re:Ask HN: Why does a url use ://? by alain94040 on Monday August 31, 2009 @06:15PM (#796842)

With UUCP, we used to put machine names in the order they were needed for routing, so in effect it was backward compared to today.

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