FREE online courses on Internet Network of Networks - World wide Web - Uniform Resource Locators - URLs

You open a resource using its address, or URL. A URL is the standard convention for specifying the location of every resource on the Internet, whether that resource is a document or service. A URL has three parts:

Scheme

The scheme describes the protocol that the client should use to access the resource. The protocol is usually followed by :// except in the case of file, which looks like file:///, mailto, which looks like mailto:, and news, which looks like news: Next table shows you how to form an URL for each type of protocol.

Host

The host is the domain name of the Internet host on which the resource resides. The third-level domain for the host name usually tells you what kind of information you find at the host. For example, you probably find Web pages at a host called www.host.com and you probably find an FTP site at a host called ftp.host.com.

Path

The path is the full path and possibly the file name of a document. Although the protocol and host are always required, the path is not. If you are opening an http URL, leaving off the path causes the Web server to return the default home page for the site.

Table: Different Types of URLs

 Format                   Example

 gopher://                gopher://gopher.umc.edu

 ftp://                     ftp://ftp.tcx.com.se/mysql

 file:///                    file:///c|win95/autoexec.bat

 http://                   http://www.mcneer.com

 mailto:                    mailto:mcybersys@yahoo.com

 wais://                   wais://wais.tihs.com

 news:                     news:comp.lang.perl

 telnet://                 telnet://internic.net