Ron Canazzi writes:
>remember--it has always really been radio-locator.com. However, the Internet
>is funny like that.  If you type in an address and it's off by a character
>or 2 and if there are no addresses that are even close--sometimes--but not
>always--you can get to the actual address.  Maybe recently, another address
>came on line that was similar enough to the radio-locator.com address that
>now negates any fuzzy logic built into the browser/server you are using.

        I run our domain name servers at Oklahoma State University so
I can shed a little light on how this all works.

        I can't speak for what your browsers do because there are so
many different ones and different versions of each one, but the actual
matching process is about as austere as it gets except that there is
presently no distinction between upper and lower case letters.  The
name has to be a perfect match, excluding case, or it just doesn't
work.  Porno sites like the former whitehouse.com and other similar
names have capitalized on that functionality for decades so you never
know what you are going to get if somebody misspells a word or forgets
a dash, etc.

        What we can do is register look-alike names such that they all
work.  Maybe somebody had radiolocator.com as an alias for a while in
the domain name server for that domain and decided to drop it.

        I often-times will register www.xyz.okstate.edu as well as
just plain xyz.okstate.edu if the customer wants it that way so that
when people log in to that site, either www.xyz.okstate.edu or
xyz.okstate.edu work.

        Many web servers use something called "virtual hosting" or
"domain-based hosting" so the webmaster has to set his/her server to
understand both urls or the public will still get the wrong thing if
they forget the www part.

        There is really very little weirdness built in to the Internet
domain name system when it is used correctly.  Not all administrators
know as much as they should, however, so we do sometimes get domains
that come and go with no apparent reason and or other intermittent
problems.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK
OSU Information Technology Division Network Operations Group