814: Mainline

An appropriate address is given in the form of a uniform resource locator (URL). The general form for a URL for an HTML file accessed via a network includes several parts:

• The first part, http:, specifies that the URL adheres to a scheme known as the hypertext transfer protocol.
• The second part, separated from the http: specifier by two slashes, specifies an Internet address, such as www.ascent.com. Such specifications consist of the name of the web-accessible computer, such as www, and the name of the domain with which that computer is associated, such as ascent.com, separated by a period. Domain names usually consist of organization names, such as ascent, and types, such as com (or edu, mil, gov, or org) separated by a period.
• The third part, separated from the Internet address by a slash, specifies a path to your HTML file, relative to a root path established by the web server. If the web server specifies a root path of d:/InetPub/wwwroot/, and you supply books/java/test.html, then d:/InetPub/wwwroot/books/java/test.html is the location of your file on the computer.

The following—with all necessary syntax—illustrates what a URL typically contains:

 *-- Scheme specifier 
 |     
 |      *-- Computer name 
 |      |  
 |      |    *-- Domain name 
 |      |    |         
 |      |    |          *-- Relative path 
 v      v    v          v 
-----  --- ---------- -------------------- 
http://www.ascent.com/books/java/test.html 
     ^    ^          ^ 
     |    |          *-- Internet-address separator (/) 
     |    *-- Name separator (.) 
     | 
     *-- Scheme separator (//) 

Note that the computer name used by many organizations for their web server is, appropriately enough, www—but it can be any name.