Current versions of most popular web browsers do not require http:// to be entered in the address field when browsing the Internet. However, whether or not a website requires www. it does not depend on the browser, but on the Domain Name System (DNS) record for that domain.
Most browsers do not require you to type http, but www may be required.
Web browsing is made possible by a huge cooperative effort based on a common language or set of protocols. All computers connected to the Internet follow these protocols in order to communicate with each other. When a surfer clicks a hyperlink or manually enters an address into their browser, it connects to the DNS database to look up the relevant DNS record. The record contains the name of the website, such as www.wisegeek.com, and the corresponding numerical address, known as the Internet Protocol (IP) address. Every computer on the Internet must have a unique IP address so that pages can be sent by web servers and received by Internet users.
When a web user clicks on a hyperlink, it connects to the DNS database to look up the corresponding DNS record.
Some DNS records contain only one version of the domain name. For example, a DNS record might contain only www.example.com, not example.com. In this case, if a browser enters the latter, no match will be found and the browser will crash or return with an error message. If the browser changes the address to www.example.com, the DNS record will be found. Now the browser will get the IP address and connect to the host server to request the desired page.
Many domains today are created without “www”. preceding the address, negating the need to enter it in the browser. The DNS record for that site will include the domain name as example.com. However, some Internet users will add the “www” prefix out of habit. To also route this traffic, the DNS records of these sites often include an additional entry called a CNAME. This tag allows you to assign an alias to the main domain name. The alias in this case would be the longer one, “www.example.com”. With this type of DNS record, a surfer arrives at the site with or without “www”. is presented.
DNS records can be changed to include a mapped alias. If the site was created as a subdomain on a host server named “www”, it may only contain www.example.com in the DNS record. If you want to change the DNS record to capture all expected traffic, contact your .
Many domains are now created without the “www”, negating the need to enter it in the browser.
