# "www2" what is that?

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/www2-what-is-that/62445>\
**Category:** programming\
**Created:** [August 27, 2004, 8:23pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/www2-what-is-that/62445 "2004-08-27T20:23:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![obey1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/fbc32d/32.png) [@obey1](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/obey1)\
**Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 8:23pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/www2-what-is-that/62445/1 "2004-08-27T20:23:41Z")

</div>

i’ve noticed a few sites that use “www2.” instead of the normal “www”. what is “www2” and what’s the difference between the two???

just curious

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/uploads/kirupa/original/3X/6/2/621e5c11736f46532526e61be85940af4230f3e5.png) [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 9:17pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/www2-what-is-that/62445/2 "2004-08-27T21:17:57Z")

</div>

A subdomain name that they have just created, I believe…

I mean the subdomain name like  
[movie.yahoo.com](http://movie.yahoo.com)  
[shopping.yahoo.com](http://shopping.yahoo.com)

I could be totally wrong though… 😃

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/uploads/kirupa/original/3X/6/2/621e5c11736f46532526e61be85940af4230f3e5.png) [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 9:18pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/www2-what-is-that/62445/3 "2004-08-27T21:18:54Z")

</div>

well… www. is just a subdomain - makes no difference really. Just a different subdomain 😉

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/uploads/kirupa/original/3X/6/2/621e5c11736f46532526e61be85940af4230f3e5.png) [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2004, 12:13am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/www2-what-is-that/62445/4 "2004-08-28T00:13:14Z")

</div>

You can go to [kirupa.com](http://kirupa.com) or [www.kirupa.com](http://www.kirupa.com) and it takes you to the same place. I’d think its a default subdomain that takes you to the root public directory.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/uploads/kirupa/original/3X/6/2/621e5c11736f46532526e61be85940af4230f3e5.png) [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2004, 5:27am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/www2-what-is-that/62445/5 "2004-08-28T05:27:11Z")

</div>

Thought I’d jump in… agree, subdomain, really makes no difference, all sites take you to the same IP regardless if you do or do not include the subdomain (with a few exceptions)… but coming to my question…

www2, or anything else, what exactly is the POINT (.) 😉 ?

peace

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/uploads/kirupa/original/3X/6/2/621e5c11736f46532526e61be85940af4230f3e5.png) [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2004, 8:00am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/www2-what-is-that/62445/6 "2004-08-28T08:00:52Z")

</div>

> 

Sometimes in a URL the “WWW” is followed by a number, such as “WWW1” or “WWW2.” **The number that follows the “WWW” indicates that the data being retrieved by the Web browser is gathering the information from a different Web server than the one that serves the typical “WWW” address.**

Ever heard of searching on webopedia?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/uploads/kirupa/original/3X/6/2/621e5c11736f46532526e61be85940af4230f3e5.png) [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2004, 8:46am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/www2-what-is-that/62445/7 "2004-08-28T08:46:01Z")

</div>

[www.mydomain.com](http://www.mydomain.com) is the address of a computer. [www2.mydomain.com](http://www2.mydomain.com) is the address of another computer (actually it could be the address of the same computer as the www computer, but it probably isn’t).

So the point is that these people have two webservers.

And the name of a webserver doesn’t have to include ‘www’ at all. It’s just something a lot of people do. It could be ‘aaa’, ‘webserver’, ‘thelittlebluecomputerinthecorner’ or anything you like.  
What tells your browser that you’re trying to connect to a webserver is the ‘http://’ part of the URL. So using both ‘http://’ and ‘www’ is saying things twice actually…