john_k - 3:03 pm on Sep 27, 2005 (gmt 0)

Right now, web sites account for the overwhelming majority of internet traffic that travels over the http and https protocols. That is subject to change and to change quickly.

Because of this, I am sticking to the old-school approach. The website doesn't have to be "www", but it does have to have a hostname.

Today, when our system receives an http resource request for "ourdomain.com", we make an assumption (because we are forced to) that this request is for the most popular type of resource - something that can be handled by a web server. And we redirect the request to "www.ourdomain.com". Three years from now, the most popular type of resource may not be a web page. And, even though we still maintain a website, we will then route naive "ourdomain.com" requests to "4thdimension.ourdomain.com" which can handle requests for this new type of resource.

So, the bottom-line of my opinion is: The user should be able to just enter the domain name and get to your website (via a redirect to hostname.yourdomain.com). Your system (webserver, load-balancing, DNS, etc.) however, should cause any http request that does not indicate a hostname to be redirected to a default hostname for your web service. The industry standard for a default web service host name is "www".