Quick Internet Question
 

In an effort to educate myself on something I am ignorant of, I ask the following:

What is "www3" and "www2" in relation to web addresses?

I googled it, but no luck....it only brought back www3 and www2 addresses.

Can someone explain what these mean?

Thanks,

KMA, Assuming you mean www.blah.com vs www[2...n].blah.com, it's generally just a naming convention chosen by the site management to handle server and cache farms. For instance with google, customers (us) come in to www.google.com (or just google.com). Since they have bazillions of people hitting their front door they balance the load among multiple servers and caches. These devices may or may not hide/sterilize the identity of the multiple servers, and so and you may or may not see the [whatever].blah.com change with multiple accesses. Where you land might be based on a simple round-robin arrangement, geographical, or linked to some sense of a "home" server in the case of ongoing relationships.

If you're concerned about bookmarking one of these numbered links, you can usually ignore it. Or lop off the number and get the same result. Depends on the system in use so you'll have to test. Smart farms return the links sterilized to reduce the mess and resulting hit on support.

I believe cyrnel says it best. He's correct.