www. & www2. in domains?

Never seen this before except on Google.

[Liane]

I was just visiting a site which has a domain at [sitename.com....] When you go to the site and pick a link ... it goes to [www2.sitename.com...]

What exactly is www2? Why would they do this? Are there advantages to using www2 as opposed to just the usual www?

The reason I ask is because the site came up #1 on Google for a particular product I was looking for and I just happened to notice the switch in url's when I went to the first link.

[andron]

They probably have several web servers and a load balancing box distributing the incoming load to the lease used box. So if www has 30% used and www2 has 28% used it will send the next request to www2.

Understand that the 3rd level in the domain in this case is just the DNS name. You could name them anything - skip, bob, ted, or www. The advantage of www is that when you type in the domain sitename in IE and ctrl-enter you get [sitename.com...]

[Liane]

Thanks Andron!

[andron]

Sure :)

[KodeKrash]

<give-poster-hard-time>Wish you people would quit advertising for www.sitename.com - their largest source of hits /has/ to be from people clicking the "example links" in forums, etc. LOL</give-poster-hard-time>

[mivox]

It's likely comparable to the outrageous link pop www.domain.com or www.yoursite.com must have. ;)

[Liane]

Oooops! Didn't realize it really is a site! So is one of Mivox's examples. I guess I'll have to be more careful in future!

[andron]

So we should use [this_is_not_a_real_URL.com...] ?