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I've seen a couple of sites that use wwws in their domain, for example: wwws.mint.com and wwws.whitehouse.gov. I'm sure it has something to do with an extra layer of security.
What does it mean and what is it used for? Why do only a handful of sites use it?
Adam
Posted 2011-11-02T16:43:28.580
Reputation: 1 723
111
The www and wwws prefixes don't affect the browser's choice of HTTP or HTTPS protocol.
A few organisations use wwws. to suggest that HTTPS is supported and arrange redirection so that users don't have to type the https:// protocol specifier.
Currently, few organisations think this is worthwhile. There is a trend to drop prefixes like www..
What does [wwws] mean?
Nothing. It is only a convention.
The prefix www is non-functional, it has no effect on the protocol used. However I believe Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World-Wide-Web, used it as a naming convention to indicate an HTTP server (i.e. a World Wide Web server). This helped to distinguish the server name from servers for other information-sharing protocols. E.g. some corporations had servers named ftp.example.com, www.example.com, mail.example.com (or maybe even gopher.example.com and wais.example.com). These prefixes were convenient for network administrators who wished to be able to locate these different services on separate servers. Nowadays other means of doing this have arisen. It is arguable the hostname prefixes were not convenient to end users. Most web browsers have tried to remove this burden from users by automatically adding http://www. and .com when the user enters single word attempts at a URL.
What is it used for?
To suggest that the server may support privacy of data in transit and certification of server identity.
A few people have taken to using wwws as a naming convention for HTTPS servers, i.e. servers that support HTTP over Secure-Sockets-Layer (SSL).
Since the name has no effect on protocols, you can run a HTTPS service on a server named example.com or foo.example.com or anything else.
The proponents of the wwws convention say that wwws is shorter and easier to type than https:// and they can therefore configure their servers to redirect a HTTP request for a wwws hostname to an HTTPS URL as a convenience for users who explicitly want to use HTTPS instead of HTTP but who find typing https:// too much of a chore.
There are other ways to provide links to a secure version of a site. Most business that need security (shops, banks) will automatically redirect users to HTTPS pages without requiring users to type a special prefix to the hostname.
Why do only a handful of sites use it?
Since it has no functional purpose, almost nobody finds it a useful convention. The trend is to drop these prefixes (e.g. look above: superuser.com instead of www.superuser.com).
Try visiting these URLs:
Then check which URL shows up in the address bar of your browser.
RedGrittyBrick
Posted 2011-11-02T16:43:28.580
Reputation: 70 632
2To add on, it is no different from sites that has URLs like secure.example.net, and it also explains the occasional appearances of www1.example.net/www2.example.net :) – Jin – 2011-11-02T17:06:31.797
I had posted a similar answer, but you beat me to it. Deleted. :) – iglvzx – 2011-11-02T17:07:09.300
14@iglvzx Please undelete it. You're new to the site, and you shouldn't be punished for being a few seconds late. That's not the point of Stack Exchange. – slhck – 2011-11-02T17:17:23.547
2@slhck Ok. Undeleted. – iglvzx – 2011-11-02T17:20:44.383
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The www1,www2,etc. was actually useful at one point. Netscape originally used that naming schema to implement crude load balancing for their web site in the early browsers. http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/braman/courses/cs625-fall2003/lec-notes/lec-notes30-1.html however, that was quickly overcome by other methods.
– Chris Nava – 2011-11-02T17:32:40.407Related: http://superuser.com/questions/60006/whats-the-purpose-of-the-www-subdomain
– Chris W. Rea – 2011-11-02T17:37:34.550+1 for getting the reserved "example" name right! ;) – Joel Coehoorn – 2011-11-02T22:07:02.933
+1 THis is why I love Stack Exchange. I'm guaranteed to learn something new everyday. – Wipqozn – 2011-11-02T22:58:57.810
Simple edit: "some corporations had servers named ...)" -> "some corporations had servers named ...) and many ISPs still do." – Mark Hurd – 2011-11-03T05:04:54.157
1What? Damn! I've read The trend is to drop these prefixes (e.g. look above: superuser.com instead of www.superuser.com)? Be warned: when optimizing website, you absolutely have to keep this www. Search google for "Use Cookie-free Domains for Components" and you'll get the picture: fast websites very often keep the "www". Be warned! – Olivier Pons – 2011-11-03T07:56:45.977
Shorthand for an http server? But http can be used for more than serving up World Wide Web data, and other protocols (ftp etc) can be served up from the same IP address (and therefore the same domain). Wouldn't www have been reserved specifically for a server intended to serve up "World Wide Web" data? – Steve314 – 2011-11-03T08:35:22.847
@Oliver: That article is about using a different base-URL for serving static content with a faster static-only HTTP server. You can achieve this by using different port numbers (e.g. http://example.com:81/… instead of http://static.example.com) or by using any pair of server hostnames (e.g. example.com for dynamic content and static.example.com for static content). In neither case is the www necessary. – RedGrittyBrick – 2011-11-03T10:45:02.500
@Steve314: Tim Berners-Lee coined the name "World Wide Web", he and his team created HTTP version 1.0 as a fundamental part of his vision for the concept of a World Wide Web. Whilst the World Wide Web encompasses other protocols (in a somewhat secondary and minor role), HTTP itself sprang directly from TBL's concept of a World Wide Web. In a short answer you have to make some generalisations in order not to lose the attention of the person asking the question. When I get time, I'll see if I can update my answer to address the point you raise. – RedGrittyBrick – 2011-11-03T10:54:31.177
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Keeping the www (or some other) prefix is also necessary to do DNS-based load balancing using CNAME DNS entries. @RedGrittyBrick, this was a very well-written answer. Would you be interested in changing and/or expanding it a bit into an article on the Super User Blog? I think it would be a great article. Let me know by comment reply or on chat if you're interested!
I've also seen wwws used as a name for a SSL accelerator proxy. – Zan Lynx – 2011-11-04T21:55:35.023
@RedGrittyBrick: Olivier is completely correct. Not just any pair of names will do. Cookies associated with example.net will be included in all requests to static.example.net. You don't want either name to be a suffix of the other. – Ben Voigt – 2012-05-06T04:58:38.117
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wwws and www are subdomains. They have no special meaning to a browser, other than the fact that they are part of a larger domain.
http://, ftp://, and https:// are examples of protocols, which do have special meaning and function.
iglvzx
Posted 2011-11-02T16:43:28.580
Reputation: 21 611
12
First of all, we need to distinguish between a protocol and a domain name. http:// and https:// denote protocols. The latter indicates that traffic should be encrypted using SSL, but otherwise is still just http://. This is important for certain parts of a web site. Any time you sign in to a web site, for example, you really ought to see https:// as the protocol(really: schema) portion of the url. Even any request that might send back cookies should probably use this (hint: that's almost all web browsing you do).
On the other hand, www and wwws are just parts of a domain name. They have no bearing on security at all.
That out of the way, there is a relatively recent convention to provision the wwws name such that the base page redirects requests for http://wwws.example.com to https://www.example.com. The reason for this is convenience. Users will often type a name like www.example.com into their browser address bar. If they explicitly wanted the secure page, they would have to type https://www.example.com into the address bar. Many site administrators want to encourage (but not force) this choice to use the secure page, and so configuring wwws to work this way simply provides a shortcut to make finding the secure page that much easier.
However, this is still not that common, and even when it is there's nothing that forces a site with the wwws to be encrypted (https:// just plain won't work if the encryption isn't there. wwws still would.), and so you should still check that a wwws page has the expected protocol.
Joel Coehoorn
Posted 2011-11-02T16:43:28.580
Reputation: 26 787
+1 for mentioning that you can use wwws for deliberately opening a secure connection without having to type https:// – sme – 2011-11-03T06:31:59.320
1@sme - My point was that most of the time right now you can't do that... at least not very often right now. – Joel Coehoorn – 2011-11-03T13:58:51.807
www is part of a hostname. It would be very rare for that to be a separate domain. (Some confusion arises because FQDN, fully-qualified domain name, is often used in conjunction with hostnames) – Ben Voigt – 2012-05-06T04:54:00.647
4
http://no-www.org/index.php has some information about what the www prefix is and why its a little silly in this day and age.
Freiheit
Posted 2011-11-02T16:43:28.580
Reputation: 527
3He's not asking "what's www" but "what's wwws" – genesis – 2011-11-05T12:42:17.590
it's vince mcmahon's(founder of the WWF) attempt to take over the www while he was drunk and his tongue was burnt – barlop – 2014-02-09T23:47:25.697