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What is www1? www2? and so on..
Article Last Updated : 11 February 2010 @ 20:36 by Adrian
We all know that “WWW” stands for World Wide Web, which is a kind of prefix before normal domain name. Web was created around 1990 in Geneva, Switzerland. But what is WWW1 or WWW2?
You must noticed www1 or www2 once in a while when you are visiting a website. WWW1, WWW2 or even WWW3 is nothing but a mirror of the original web server which is typical WWW. Many websites like government, banks even major search engines like Google(www1.google.com or www2.google.com) and Yahoo(www1.yahoo.com or www2.yahoo.com)! uses www1 and www2. The main purpose of this techniques is to reduce server load. Sometimes the original server need to be updated or modified but major websites like .gov, .edu, google.com, yahoo.com cannot just shut their main server down for hours to update their system. Therefore, they need to use www1 or www2 duplication of their mainframe server.
Sometimes this different servers used for the serving users based on their geographical location. Suppose, if someone type www.google.com form US, they might be taken to the original google server which means www.google.com but if someone type www.google.com from Africa, it might take them to www2.google.com or www1.google.com.
I was surprised that not a lot of information showed up in Google or Yahoo when i was searching for it. If you know more about WWW2 or WWW1 please feel free to share with everyone here by adding your comment at the bottom. I was wondering if there is any security issue behind this mirror web server policy?
In short, it serves as a mirror subdomain to ease traffic congestion
2 Responses to What is www1? www2? and so on..
Himmat Singh
February 11th, 2010 at 10:39 PM
Hey Adrian, spot on there.
Sites such as nst.com.my and malaysiakini.com use this feature to ease the traffic load on their websites. As you said, they are mirror sites.
Adrian
February 11th, 2010 at 10:57 PM
absolutely..!!! that’s one of the examples.. sometimes sites like youtube also uses it but they masked it. so that what ever mirror sites is running, is still http://www.youtube.com.. cool ah