As you can see by the URL showing for this page (in the URL Address field above), and probably through your own experience, the "www." portion of the "machine name" is often optional or implied. But sometimes it isn't, and a "www." must be added to the site's domain name. Other sites work without it, but not with it. It's a mess. (And just TRY explaining this to someone who doesn't like computers and is desperately trying to avoid learning anything about them.) In a similar fashion, since http is the default protocol used by web browsers, users are often saved the burden of entering the initial "http://". In the absence of anything explicit, many browsers safely assume or provide it.

Specifying an alternate port: However, as we explained on our page for port 80, port 80 is the "default port" for the web's http protocol. How, then, if we wish to use an "alternate port" like 81 or 8080, do we override this default to specify the port we desire?

If we wish to override the default service port that is implied by the protocol (http), we place a colon (:) after the domain name portion followed by the port we wish to use. The URL shown above would cause the browser to override its normal use of port 80 for http, and instead attempt to connect to a server listening at "www.domain.com" for connections on port 81.

If you ever see a URL using this format, with some number following a colon after the URL's domain, you'll know that this URL is asking the browser to connect to a server listening for incoming connections on the specified port rather than its default.

Trojan Sightings: RemoConChubo