www2.example.com - what is it?

[bigpapa]

Hello. Can someone briefly explain what www2 is? Also, if I have a domain "www.mywebsite.com" can someone else create a website "www2.mywebsite.com" or does my "owning" or leasing www.mywebsite.com prevent anyone else from developing a www2 or www3.mywebsite.com? Thank you kindly.

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], bigpapa!

whoever registers mywebsite.com can then create any number of subdomains, such as www.mywebsite.com, ftp.mywebsite.com, pop3.mywebsite.com, smtp.mywebsite.com, blog.mywebsite.com, www2.mywebsite.com, etc.
you can control your subdomains with your registrar account.

www2 means whatever you want it to mean - it could be a company intranet domain, a subdomain for another public site, a domain for serving images or other media, etc.

[youfoundjake]

A lot of big companies will do it for load balancing.. if www.cnn.com gets too overloaded, content from www2.cnn.com will be displayed to you, and so on and so forth, www3, www4...

[bigpapa]

Thank you all for replying. I guess what I am really trying to ask is if I have the rights to www.mywebsite.com can another party create a bogus site www2.mywebsite.com? Can this other party mock my website with his/her own www2.mywebsite.com? Ok, thanks again.

[youfoundjake]

no, no one can create a subdomain (www2) on website.com unless you give them actual access to your CPanel to create subdomains.
You are the only one that has control of your domain.

An easy way to think of it:
website.com is a network.
www is the name of the computer on the network website.com
www2 is the name of another computer on the network website.com.
You can add a computer to handle the file transfering from your network to various people.. call that computer ftp
So then you have ftp.website.com
Next you want to send email, so you add a computer that sends and receives email for everyone in your company..smtp and pop
then you have smtp.website.com and pop.website.com

Those "computer names" are actually services that run on website.com, and only you can determine what services or "computers" can run on your network (website.com)...

hopefully that helps..

[bigpapa]

Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you all!