Web Address - URL
So you understand that the Internet is just a large network and that the world wide web is a collection of linked HTML webpages that you can access via the Internet's hardware. You also know that when you are visiting a web page you are simply accessing a page that is located on a web server. But the big question is, How does my computer find a web page on the world wide web? How does my computer know where to go to access that web page? The answer lies in the web page's URL and the server's IP address.
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. The URL is the address of a web page. Just like your apartment has an address, so too does a web page. Computers find websites by reading the URL that you type into a web browser's address bar as seen below. The URL tells the computer where to find the page that you are looking for. Different Parts of a URL
The URL of a web page can be broken down into various parts. The different parts of the URL help the computer figure out where the HTML file is located. Let's look at an example and examine the different parts of the URL.
IP Address
Once the computer learns what URL you are looking for it then needs to know where the server that holds that file is located. It needs to know the address of the web server. It needs the IP address of the web server.
Every computer on the internet has an IP address. An IP address is the address of a computer on the internet. An IP address looks like this, 164.124.101.2. This looks like a crazy number to you and me but to a computer it means a lot. It tells your computer the address of the computer that is holding the HTML file that you are are looking for. As mentioned above every computer has an IP address, even yours. Your computer has an IP address because the web servers need to know where to send the requested files. To find the IP address of your computer follow these steps:
Summery
Now to put this all together. When you are going to the web site www.pizza.com you computer needs to know two things:
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