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Protocol Question


Guest anon
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your prefix ftp:// is specifying the protocol to use, with the suffix a.b.c.d (the standard way of implying an IP) as the address for where to use the protocol. Also - ever notice sometimes there is a colon followed by a number?

 

eg.

 

http://192.168.1.101:80

 

The colon eighty indicated what port to use. See, all the standard protocols use default ports - but you could set up your web server to use port 999 if you want, but people would need to connect to http://your.page.com:999 instead.

 

A note on DNS

 

Domain name servers tie an IP (a.b.c.d) with real words, eg. your.page.com. IP addresses are all the computer understands, so if you type in ftp.192.168.1.101 you're indicating you'd like to ask the DNS server for an IP for the word "ftp.192.168.1.101". This is very similar to where people start to get lost in programming - the numeric # 5 is not the same as the string "5". 5 is 0101 to the computer, whereas the string "5" is like 100101010111 lets say. Understanding binary makes all of this clear.

 

 

8 4 2 1 = Numbers for binary conversion

0 1 0 1 = 5 in decimal (because 4+1 = add up wherever there is a one)

 

This applies to networking as well. IP's are truly

 

00010110.01011100.01100010.00000111

 

but whatever that is in decimal so that its easier for us to understand.

So "ftp.123.123.23" is a string, whereas 192.168.1.101 looks more like that long binary crap.

 

Hope that helps.

8)

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Guest anon

I knew about the :80 being the port number, but the rest of your post, i had to read three times before i understood, old age creeping in :lol: Thanks for the info Static 8)

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Newbie-ized Translation (not for Anon, but for others who may read this):

 

Your browser sees that you typed something in the address field. If it's a buncha numbers, it assumes that it is an IP and doesn't need to query the DNS servers, since you just told it the IP to go to. If it sees non-numerical characters in it, then it must be a name and not an IP, so it queries the DNS servers, who respond "There is no site with the domain name ftp.buncha-numbers" The DNS server just sees it as a long word.

 

I hope I translated that right. Babelfish's 'Techie to Newbie' translation can be kinda incomprehensible sometimes (actually, that would be a cool idea to have an interactive translator like that for fun).

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