Re: Conversion of www.name of site.com to the actual numbers www.154.786.com.

This isn't how the DNS system works.  The numbers don't
replace the 'freetime' part, which is part of the domain
name; instead they replace the entire thing.

The kind of application you're looking for is something that
"does DNS lookups", such as the "nslookup" in Unix.  If you
checked for "dns lookup" or "nslookup" on a Windows or Mac
software archive, you'd find something similar, I'm certain.
It's a cheap and easy program, and in fact I have a version
of it for my Windows CE machine.  There's undoubtedly freeware
available.

As further explanation about DNS, the ".com" part is the "top
level domain".  The "freetime.com" part is the domain itself.
The "www" is a specific machine address at the "freetime.com"
domain, so "www.freetime.com" identifies a particular address
at a particular domain.

An internet address (the "IP numbers") is a series of 4 numbers
separated by dots; these numbers are from 0 to 255.  A "name"
address such as "www.freetime.com" is really just an alias for
these numbers.

DNS works like this.  When given a machine name, the DNS lookup
program (built into your internet connection software, usually
in the OS these days) first looks at the top level domain, which
is ".com" in our example.  The program knows that for ".com",
it should check with a registry on the net (maintained by
InterNIC/Network Solutions) to look up the full domain.  It
asks InterNIC "where do I find more information about freetime.com"?

InterNIC's top level domain servers tell your computer "you ask
206.16.238.1, which is what's registered with us as the primary
DNS server for freetime.com."  Your computer mumbles a "thankyou"
and asks that other machine, "I'm looking for the machine named
www at this freetime.com domain, what's the address?"  The machine
running a DNS server replies, "Oh, you want 206.16.238.115!"
Your computer says "thanks, dude!" and runs off to 206.16.238.115.

This all happens transparently to you, when you type in
"http://www.freetime.com" to your web browser, so you really have
no idea that all this DNS communication is going on behind your
back.  To you, it looks like your computer is connecting to the
NAME, when really it only connects to the NUMBER.

That's DNS In A Nutshell For Dummies, by Kynn.  Hope that helps
and I hope it shows why there would be no www.154.786.com address
anywhere in the process.

At 12:50 PM 8/27/1999 , Don wrote:
>Hi
>I'm looking for a app. that will convert
>URL addresses to the actualy numbers.
>
>Ex. http://www.freetime.com (I made up)
>to http://www.1432.756.com
>
>Thanks
>     +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>     Multimedia Computer Applications Specialist 
>       Graphic Designer
>Don Ledarney    Multimedia C. A. S., CT (Biochem.)
>Please visit: http://www.escape.ca/~dledarney/
>please reply by clicking here-->> "mailto:dledarney(at)man.net"
>Member of the HTML Writers Guild
>http://www.hwg.org/
>

-- 
Kynn Bartlett                                    mailto:kynn(at)hwg.org
President, HTML Writers Guild                    http://www.hwg.org/
AWARE Center Director                          http://aware.hwg.org/

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