Defininition of a Web Address

by John Wu

Overview

Defininition of a Web Address

A web address means different things depending on the context. For the average computer user, a web address is just the domain name of a website. For a web browser, it needs more information than just the domain name to form the entire URL (Universal Resource Locator) that's used to fetch specific information from a website. For computers and networking equipment on the Internet, they don't use domain names at all, but use numerical IP addresses instead.
Computer User

A user remembers the web address as a domain name to a website. The website has to create a default URL for any browsers referencing the website only by domain name.

URL

Once the domain name of the website is entered into a browser, it fetches information from the website for its default page. After a link on the webpage is clicked, the browser has additional information in the URL to form a web address which includes the specific location on the website that has the information being requested.
IP Address

Computer and networking equipment use numerical IP addresses exclusively to communicate with each other. Domain names are used by people to make websites on the Internet easier to remember.
DNS

Domain names are translated into numerical IP addresses and vice versa through a service called DNS (Domain Name Service). All computers need DNS running to communicate on the Internet.
Significance

When somebody mentions web address, all he wants is the domain name of the website. However, the web browser and computer see the web address as something more, yet related to the initial domain name. In the end, all that's usually needed for the web address is the domain name of the website.