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Speaker 1: Get text with technology with text Stuff from host efforts

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm

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Speaker 1: your host, Jonathan Strickland, and it's just me flying so

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Speaker 1: low today. And I thought I would take a look

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Speaker 1: at something that a lot of us deal with frequently,

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Speaker 1: but we often take for granted. So I wanted to

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Speaker 1: talk about web addresses specifically. I wanted to talk about

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Speaker 1: U r l s and how they make using the

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Speaker 1: web easier. But in order to do that, I need

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Speaker 1: to set some background first. So this is all going

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Speaker 1: to be very basic stuff, with the way the Internet

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Speaker 1: infrastructure works and the way the web works. But I

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Speaker 1: thought it was one of those things that once you

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Speaker 1: you have the realization of what's going on in the background,

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Speaker 1: you have a greater appreciation for things. So to get

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Speaker 1: the obvious out of the way, the Internet is a

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Speaker 1: network of computer networks. That's why it's called the Internet.

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Speaker 1: It's what allows your computer to communicate with other computers.

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Speaker 1: But in order for there to be any communication, you

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Speaker 1: have to have a couple of things. You need rules

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Speaker 1: that all the computers are going to abide by. You

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Speaker 1: need some sort of common language that all the different

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Speaker 1: types of computers can understand, because otherwise you would only

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Speaker 1: be able to receive information from similar machines as your own,

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Speaker 1: because they all operate with different operating systems, using different

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Speaker 1: file types, that sort of thing. And you also need

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Speaker 1: a method for computers to know where to send a message,

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Speaker 1: because if you didn't have that, the Internet would just

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Speaker 1: be a bunch of computers shouting into the void, hoping

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Speaker 1: that the machine they are trying to reach, actually here's them,

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Speaker 1: while simultaneously hoping that everyone else ignores them. And it

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Speaker 1: might seem like that's how things work in your typical

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Speaker 1: Internet forum, but that's not what's really going on. So

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Speaker 1: every device connected to the Internet has an Internet Protocol

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Speaker 1: address an i P address. Now, an IP address is

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Speaker 1: sort of like a phone number or a physical address.

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Speaker 1: It's the number that includes the information needed for data

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Speaker 1: to arrive at that particular device. It tells the network

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Speaker 1: where that device is in the grand connection of the

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Speaker 1: network of networks. Using the old i P V four method,

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Speaker 1: the version four of the Internet Protocol, IP addresses have

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Speaker 1: a thirty two bit number. Now that creates a hard

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Speaker 1: limit for addresses, which is specifically four billion, two million,

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Speaker 1: nine D sixty seven thousand, two hundred ninety six of them.

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Speaker 1: Now of those, more than two million of them are

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Speaker 1: reserved for specific uses, and so you effectively have around

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Speaker 1: four billion addresses that could be assigned. An ip v

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Speaker 1: four address is represented by four groups of numbers. Those

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Speaker 1: range between zero and two, meaning they're two fifty six

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Speaker 1: total potential numbers for each one. And each of those

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Speaker 1: four groups of numbers is separated from the others by dots.

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Speaker 1: UH each of those numbers groups. They represent a group

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Speaker 1: of eight bits. So here's an example of an i

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Speaker 1: p v four i P address. It could be two

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Speaker 1: six dot to seven dot six one dot one three seven.

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Speaker 1: That's just a random example, and four billion addresses sounds

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Speaker 1: like a bunch, But it didn't take that long for

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Speaker 1: those addresses to start getting scarce. The address pool was

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Speaker 1: exhausted in February of two thousand eleven. And you might

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Speaker 1: have heard some stories about how certain companies, like big

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Speaker 1: software companies UH that we're relying on I p v

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Speaker 1: four have had some issues running out of IP addresses

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Speaker 1: to assign to people on their networks. So they're folks

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Speaker 1: couldn't actually connect, and not just people but executives. We're

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Speaker 1: not having any luck connecting to the Internet because they

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Speaker 1: had run out of IP addresses to assign to their employees.

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Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons there's been a big push

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Speaker 1: to move from I p V four to I p

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Speaker 1: V six, which uses eight bit numbers, not thirty two

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Speaker 1: bit numbers. So what does that actually mean? Well, if

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Speaker 1: you go with I p V six, there are three

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Speaker 1: point four oh three times ten to the thirty eight

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Speaker 1: power or two to the hundred and twenty eight power

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Speaker 1: addresses available in IPv six. Why am I putting the

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Speaker 1: number in those terms, Because to actually spell out the

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Speaker 1: number in full would probably take most of this podcast,

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Speaker 1: and that would only be interesting for a few seconds.

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Speaker 1: So how can we put into terms what that actually means. Well,

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Speaker 1: there'd be so many addresses that even if you were

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Speaker 1: adding a huge number every pico second, it would probably

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Speaker 1: last until our son actually burns out. So I think

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Speaker 1: will be good in the long term when everyone switches over,

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Speaker 1: will be in great shape until the sun burns out,

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Speaker 1: at which point will have other problems to worry about. Now,

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Speaker 1: an I p V six address is a little more

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Speaker 1: complicated than the I p v for one, so uh,

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Speaker 1: if you were to look at one of these addresses.

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Speaker 1: An example would sound something like this to zero zero

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Speaker 1: one colon c d b A colon zero zero zero zero,

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Speaker 1: colon zero zero zero zero, colon zero zero zero zero,

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Speaker 1: colon zero zero zero zero, colon three to seven, colon

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Speaker 1: n five to It is significantly longer, and now you

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Speaker 1: can actually simplify things by omitting the groups of zeros.

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Speaker 1: You don't have to include all of those. There is

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Speaker 1: a way of having shorthand to express that number, and

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Speaker 1: the way you do that is you drop the groups

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Speaker 1: of zeros, but you include an extra colon to signify

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Speaker 1: that there is no mission. So the long address I

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Speaker 1: mentioned just a bit ago could be shortened to two

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Speaker 1: zero zero one colon c d b A colon colon

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Speaker 1: three to seven colon to That double colon would represent

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Speaker 1: that everything in between those were just empty groups of zeros.

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Speaker 1: So that's one way of shortening it. Now, your own

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Speaker 1: computer's IP address is not likely to stay the same

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Speaker 1: across multiple uses. Instead, receives an IP address from a

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Speaker 1: dynamic host configuration Protocol server that's on your network. The

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Speaker 1: server gives the network a bit more freedom because it

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Speaker 1: can shift IP addresses around whenever necessary. But other computers

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Speaker 1: on the network, like web servers, they have to have

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Speaker 1: the same IP address all the time because otherwise they

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Speaker 1: would just get lost in the cluttery. They would have

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Speaker 1: to consistently update all the registries to alert them of

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Speaker 1: their new IP address whenever they changed, or else any

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Speaker 1: incoming traffic would never find the server. So while your

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Speaker 1: personal computer might have an IP address one day and

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Speaker 1: a different one the next day, the web server that

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Speaker 1: you want to visit that has the website you are

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Speaker 1: interested in, is going to have the same IP address

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Speaker 1: day to day. They have what is called a static

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Speaker 1: IP address, so it's going to be assigned to that

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Speaker 1: machine and only that machine. You'll never find another machine

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Speaker 1: with that same IP address, at least as long as

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Speaker 1: the original one is active. Now, the IP address is

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Speaker 1: associated with the media access control address for that specific

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Speaker 1: network interface on the server. Now, that's a MAC address.

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Speaker 1: You probably have heard that term. You typically find the

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Speaker 1: MAC address written on a little sticker that tends to

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Speaker 1: be on these servers. Sometimes it has sometimes it's written

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Speaker 1: down in someone's notebooks somewhere. But that is what is

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Speaker 1: permanently associated with the static IP address. And this is

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Speaker 1: how the Internet keeps track of where everything is. It's

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Speaker 1: all machine readable language, but it's not really useful to humans.

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Speaker 1: It's not human readable. Most of us can't remember I

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Speaker 1: P addresses that easily, particularly once you start adding lots

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Speaker 1: and lots of websites. So if you had to remember

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Speaker 1: the IP address of every single web server that you

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Speaker 1: wanted to visit in order to, you know, access a

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Speaker 1: specific web page, after a while, you would find it

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Speaker 1: very difficult to keep them all straight. So we needed

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Speaker 1: to have a different means of accessing these things to

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Speaker 1: make it easier for people. And that method ends up

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Speaker 1: being one that can correspond to those IP addresses but

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Speaker 1: doesn't require us to remember the strings of numbers. And

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Speaker 1: that's where the u r L comes in. U r

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Speaker 1: L stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and that's what allows

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Speaker 1: us to use human language to reach the information we

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Speaker 1: want when using the web. And it consists of a

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Speaker 1: few different pieces, and all of these correspond to machine language,

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Speaker 1: which the computers understand, uh, and it's important to be

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Speaker 1: able to match the two up. So the pieces that

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Speaker 1: make up a u r L. First, if you look

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Speaker 1: at a web browser and you're looking at the address

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Speaker 1: bar and you're looking at a specific web page. The

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Speaker 1: first thing you're probably going to see, depending upon the

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Speaker 1: browser and which version you're using, is the h T

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Speaker 1: t P colon slash slash prefix. Now that stands for

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Speaker 1: Hypertext Transfer Protocol. That little string of letters defines the

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Speaker 1: message format that tells the computer which sets of rules

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Speaker 1: to follow when exchanging information across the Internet. Because there

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Speaker 1: are lots of different sets of rules, different protocols, it

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Speaker 1: all depends upon what you are actually trying to do.

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Speaker 1: So there's the file Transfer Protocol which is FTP uh

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Speaker 1: and that's not the only other one. There's also ones

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Speaker 1: like the Internet Message Access Protocol or IMAP. But ht

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Speaker 1: P h T t P is the protocol we use

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Speaker 1: primarily in web browsers, that hypertext transfer protocol. Now the

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Speaker 1: middle bit of the web address, after the H T

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Speaker 1: t P colon slash slash it corresponds to the server

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Speaker 1: or group of servers you want to access within a

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Speaker 1: top level domain. Well, that means we need to learn

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Speaker 1: what a top level domain is. Uh So, if you're

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Speaker 1: wondering what domain name is, if you look at something

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Speaker 1: the the dot com part of your typical web address,

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Speaker 1: that is the domain name. Domain names generally tell you

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Speaker 1: something about the site you are visiting, so for example,

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Speaker 1: dot com suggests a commercial business, dot org is an organization,

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Speaker 1: dot gov is government, dot m L is military. Different

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Speaker 1: countries have their own top level domains, like dot r

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Speaker 1: you as Russia, or dot UK is the United Kingdom,

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Speaker 1: but these have become a lot more fluid over the

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Speaker 1: last few years, particularly with the release of new top

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Speaker 1: level domains that really open the floodgates and make this

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Speaker 1: UH not quite as cut and dry as it was

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Speaker 1: when it first when the web was was brand new.

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Speaker 1: But that is your domain name or the domain name

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Speaker 1: of the site that you're trying to visit. So for www,

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Speaker 1: dot how stuff works dot com UH, dot com would

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Speaker 1: be the domain name, and how stuff works would be

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Speaker 1: the second level domain off of the dot com top

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Speaker 1: level domain, and Www indicates the host name the specific

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Speaker 1: machine inside that second level domain that contains the information

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Speaker 1: you want UH, And it's not always going to be Www.

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Speaker 1: That's the most common, but it's not always going to

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Speaker 1: be that. If you're looking at a long web address as,

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Speaker 1: then there's a slash after that top level domain. So

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Speaker 1: maybe it was how stuff Works dot com h slash

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Speaker 1: and then another name there. Uh. Well, everything that follows

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Speaker 1: that slash after the top level domain, uh is a

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Speaker 1: reference to the directory in the file system that contains

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Speaker 1: the specific file you are interested in. So this is

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Speaker 1: just a means of organization. It's a way for the

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Speaker 1: computer to know where to look to pull the specific

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Speaker 1: file you want to look at. So remember that when

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Speaker 1: you're using a web browser and you're looking at a

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Speaker 1: web page, you're really looking at a file. And everything

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Speaker 1: that follows that that top level domain is just a

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Speaker 1: way of pointing the computer, the server to the specific

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Speaker 1: file you are interested in. So it sends it to

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Speaker 1: your browser and you can see it or experience it. However,

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Speaker 1: uh that maybe, So for that to work, you can't

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Speaker 1: have duplicate web addresses. Otherwise servers wouldn't know which machine

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Speaker 1: you actually wanted to contact. So you can't have two

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Speaker 1: different sites that both used www. Dot house, stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. But how do you prevent duplicates from happening?

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Speaker 1: How can you make sure that someone doesn't go out

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Speaker 1: and create a website that already uh you know, that

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Speaker 1: uses an address that's already in use. Well, that's why

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Speaker 1: there is a specific process you have to follow when

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Speaker 1: you establish a web address, and that process begins with

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Speaker 1: a registrar. Registrars are entities that are authorized to assign

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Speaker 1: host names under one or more top level domains like

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Speaker 1: dot com and dot org and that sort of stuff.

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Speaker 1: Registrars then register those names with inter in IIC, this

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Speaker 1: is a service a service rather under i CAN, I

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Speaker 1: CAN as an organization. The acronym stands for the Internet

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Speaker 1: Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and i can's job

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Speaker 1: is to maintain order in all this chaos by overseeing

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Speaker 1: the root name servers, among other things. I CAN actually

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Speaker 1: has a lot of different responsibilities, but one of them

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Speaker 1: is to make sure that this system remains orderly. So

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Speaker 1: registration secures the web address for the server containing that

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Speaker 1: relevant information. No one else will be allowed to use

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Speaker 1: that web address, at least no one will be allowed

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Speaker 1: to use it legitimately. Uh So, anyone who uses www

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Speaker 1: dot house stuff works dot com should, in theory, go

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Speaker 1: straight to the house Stuffworks homepage and nowhere else. I'll

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Speaker 1: talk about an exception to this a little bit later,

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Speaker 1: but it involves something hinky. So how does the Internet

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Speaker 1: know which computer you need to contact when you type

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Speaker 1: in the web address in human language, because like I said,

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Speaker 1: it's human language, not machine language. Machines don't read human

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Speaker 1: language the way we do, at least not natively. You

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Speaker 1: can build in natural language algorithms that can parse language

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Speaker 1: and understand in a way or at least mapp in

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Speaker 1: a way what that language means, and then respond to it.

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Speaker 1: But that's not the way machines typically communicate. So the

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Speaker 1: way machines do this is through the Domain Name system

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Speaker 1: or DNS. Now, in the early days of the Internet,

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Speaker 1: there was no DNS. The Network Information Center maintained a

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Speaker 1: text file that had web addresses mapped to i P addresses. So,

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Speaker 1: in other words, if you had a web address back

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Speaker 1: in those early early days of the Internet we're talking

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Speaker 1: pre then your web address appeared in this text file

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Speaker 1: and was corresponding. You know, it corresponded to the actual

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Speaker 1: i P address of the web server that contained that

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Speaker 1: web page. So if you had a website at that time,

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Speaker 1: then it would be inside this text file. But as

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Speaker 1: you probably can imagine, this text file got really big,

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Speaker 1: really quickly as more and more entities started jumping on

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Speaker 1: the Internet and and putting web pages on the Internet.

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Speaker 1: This text file grew to an unmanageable size, so it

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Speaker 1: was inefficient to keep a single text document as the reference.

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Speaker 1: It was taking too long to cross reference web addresses

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Speaker 1: to IP addresses. It was actually increasing the amount of

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Speaker 1: time it would take for you to go to a

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Speaker 1: website through your browser because it was just taking too

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Speaker 1: long to resolve the web address name. So that's when

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Speaker 1: the University of Wisconsin formed the Domain Name System and

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Speaker 1: it automatically maps web addresses to IP addresses. So when

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Speaker 1: you type in an address, your request goes out over

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Speaker 1: your network the Internet service provider that you use UM

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Speaker 1: it goes over their network to their domain name server. Now,

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Speaker 1: not every computer on the domain name system has every

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Speaker 1: web address and IP address stored in it. It would

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Speaker 1: be crazy if they did. So you type in a

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Speaker 1: web address, it goes out over your Internet service provider's

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Speaker 1: network to the DNS server. UH. It consults its registry

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Speaker 1: to see if it in fact has the information needed,

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Speaker 1: and if it doesn't, it works with the other servers

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Speaker 1: on the d n S to find that information send

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Speaker 1: it to your computer so that it can contact the

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Speaker 1: appropriate web server and get the file that it wants. So,

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Speaker 1: if you're using a browser to look up a web page,

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Speaker 1: your request goes to the d n S and that

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Speaker 1: sends the IP address of the appropriate server once it's

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Speaker 1: identified it to your browser. Your browser then essentially sends

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Speaker 1: a request to the web server that has that particular

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Speaker 1: page that file and says, hey, can I see that?

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Speaker 1: And the web server, assuming everything is on the up

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Speaker 1: and up, says, of course you can, and sends the

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Speaker 1: file like the web page to your browser and uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, travels through the network in this way. It's

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Speaker 1: not it's not a direct pathway from the server to

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Speaker 1: your computer necessarily, and then it shows up in your browser. Now,

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Speaker 1: all this stuff happens in fractions of a second. Um.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it can take a little longer depending upon the

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Speaker 1: stats of the network and the amount of traffic involved.

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Speaker 1: But it's still an incredibly fast process to especially when

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Speaker 1: you consider how much is actually going on here with

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Speaker 1: all the cross referencing. To go from web address address

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Speaker 1: to IP address to sending the signal to responding to it,

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Speaker 1: it's amazing. Now, I've got a couple of other things

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Speaker 1: I wanted to mention. One of those is why are

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Speaker 1: so many web addresses written in English. Now not all

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Speaker 1: of them are, and in fact, this has changed quite

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Speaker 1: a bit over the last few years. But for a

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Speaker 1: long time, English was the dominant language in web addresses,

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Speaker 1: even web addresses that were in other countries, uh that

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Speaker 1: don't use English as their primary language. And the reason

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Speaker 1: is pretty you know, well, pretty cut and dry. Really,

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Speaker 1: it's because the people who developed the standards we use

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Speaker 1: for creating web addresses, we're mostly English speaking Americans, so

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Speaker 1: um or English speaking natives, whether it was of America

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Speaker 1: or other countries. Now. Uh. The people who established those

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Speaker 1: rules included Tim Burners Lee, who worked for CERN and

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Speaker 1: was what we consider the the inventor of the Worldwide Web.

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Speaker 1: He designed the first web page, and then the Internet

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Speaker 1: Engineering Task Force or i e t F. They established

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Speaker 1: the set of standards for web addresses in and in

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Speaker 1: setting up the standards, the i e t F limited

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Speaker 1: web addresses to upper and lowercase Latin letters, in other words,

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Speaker 1: the letters that appear in the English alphabet. And you

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Speaker 1: could also use digits from zero to nine, and also

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Speaker 1: a few symbols, not all of them, but a few

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Speaker 1: of them. And if you spoke English, you you happen

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Speaker 1: to have an English keyboard, a keyboard that had Latin

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Speaker 1: alphabetical letters on it, that was okay, But if you

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Speaker 1: have to live in one of those countries that doesn't

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Speaker 1: use the Latin alphabet, it made using the web more difficult.

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Speaker 1: So for you folks out there using English keyboards such

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Speaker 1: as myself, imagine if instead the Internet relied upon a

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Speaker 1: different alphabet, like an Arabic alphabet or a Cyrillic alphabet,

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Speaker 1: and you only had the English alphabet or Latin alphabet

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Speaker 1: to work with, it would be much harder for you

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Speaker 1: to navigate the web. You would have to possibly use

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Speaker 1: either you know, a mapping system, so that's mapping English

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Speaker 1: or Latin letters rather to these other alphabets, or you

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Speaker 1: might have to insert the letters one by one using

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Speaker 1: the insert um uh option. It's not the easiest thing

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Speaker 1: in the world to do um So that was one

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Speaker 1: of the drawbacks to the Web for many years, and

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Speaker 1: it wasn't until two thousand nine that i CAN approved

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Speaker 1: the use of internationalized domain names. That meant that Web

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Speaker 1: addresses could finally include non English characters in them. And coincidentally,

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Speaker 1: perhaps two thousand nine was also the year that the

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Speaker 1: United States government gave up control of i CAN and

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Speaker 1: they transitioned it to a multi stakeholder governance model. And

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Speaker 1: you might wonder what that means. It's it's essentially i

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Speaker 1: CAN is a nonprofit organization and it only answers to

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Speaker 1: stakeholders rather than having to answer to the United States government.

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Speaker 1: And you might wonder why it was i CAN ever

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Speaker 1: answering to the U. S Government in the first place.

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Speaker 1: But keep in mind, the Internet itself is essentially the

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Speaker 1: product of a US government project. It all started back

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Speaker 1: with ARPA back in those days, it wasn't even DARPA yet,

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Speaker 1: with our PA net, which established the general structure and

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Speaker 1: protocols that would be used later and evolve into the

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Speaker 1: ones that we use for the Internet. So the United

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Speaker 1: States was very heavily involved in the construction and the

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Speaker 1: standardization of the Internet, which is why things are the

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Speaker 1: way they are now. Besides non Latin characters, you are

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Speaker 1: els can now also contain emojis, those little symbols that

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Speaker 1: mean all sorts of stuff. These days. Used to be

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Speaker 1: just being smiley and frowny faces and winky faces, but

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Speaker 1: now it's all sorts of stuff. And we've seen a

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Speaker 1: couple of different examples of this, Coke launched an ad

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Speaker 1: campaign that used a single emoji Internet address, and recently

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Speaker 1: Norwegian Airlines did this for a special announcement they were

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Speaker 1: launching direct flights from Copenhagen to Las Vegas. So there

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Speaker 1: you are. L was www dot Airplane, Emoji slot Machine,

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Speaker 1: Emoji money, emoji dot w S, which is adorable and maddening.

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Speaker 1: Um so this could lead to a new era of

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Speaker 1: emoji u r l's aimed at people younger than I am,

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Speaker 1: so get off my lawn. Okay, But seriously, this actually

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Speaker 1: does sound like a pretty nifty idea to mean. The

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Speaker 1: limitation really is that unless you have a device that

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Speaker 1: has the emojis available, it makes it harder to access

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Speaker 1: these sites, at least harder to access them directly. You

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Speaker 1: could still get there through other means, like a direct

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Speaker 1: link from another site or search results from a search

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Speaker 1: engine like Google. But maybe it's not a big deal anyway,

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Speaker 1: because I mean, how many people actually bother to type

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Speaker 1: in the web address for the websites they are going to?

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Speaker 1: Besides me? I know I do it. Maybe some of

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Speaker 1: you out there do it a lot too. But in

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Speaker 1: my mind this is very similar to the limitations we

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Speaker 1: saw when we could only use Latin alphabetical figures or

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Speaker 1: character is rather when typing in web addresses. It's it's

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Speaker 1: very similar to that because if you don't have a

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Speaker 1: smartphone or other device that has these emojis that are

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Speaker 1: built into it, you then have to construct them some

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Speaker 1: other way. So I imagine most of these web addresses

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Speaker 1: will have a language variant of them, not just the

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Speaker 1: emoji ones. All right, So we've got a couple of

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Speaker 1: other things we need to cover before I can wrap

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Speaker 1: up here. One of those is what about you are

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Speaker 1: l shorteners? So these are techniques that redirect traffic to

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Speaker 1: a domain name by using a short string to conserve characters. So,

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Speaker 1: in other words, instead of having a long web address,

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Speaker 1: you might have a much shorter one. Sometimes the shorter

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Speaker 1: one is a vanity you are l so that it's

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Speaker 1: very easy for you to tell somebody, Hey, use this

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Speaker 1: very short uh web address, You'll go straight to my site.

404
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Speaker 1: Sometimes it's more of like a random seeming string of

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Speaker 1: letters and numbers, which makes a little harder to communicate,

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Speaker 1: at least verbally, But at any rate, these techniques are

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Speaker 1: meant to make it easier to navigate to a specific

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Speaker 1: page that otherwise has a long or cumbersome web address.

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Speaker 1: It can be used for lots of different reasons. It

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Speaker 1: can also be used to track traffic, so in other words,

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Speaker 1: it's a strategy so that you can tag traffic for

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Speaker 1: one reason or another in order to keep an eye

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Speaker 1: on what's going on with a site. So in other words,

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Speaker 1: it's not just a redirect. It's also kind of tagging

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Speaker 1: to get an idea of traffic patterns. Sometimes it's used

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Speaker 1: in a sneaky way to disguise the actual destination of

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Speaker 1: the redirect. So in other words, I could say, hey,

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Speaker 1: look at this really cool website, and I use a

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Speaker 1: u r L shortener, And unless you have a means

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Speaker 1: of previewing where that shortener is pointing to, you might

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Speaker 1: click on it not knowing what the destination is and

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Speaker 1: it might end up being a place where there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of malware. Or maybe it's a website that has

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Speaker 1: tons of pop up ads and I'm really just trying

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00:26:00,720 --> 00:26:02,800
Speaker 1: to drive traffic to it because that way I can

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Speaker 1: drive up revenue. Um. There are a lot of kind

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Speaker 1: of ways to abuse the shortened u r L s.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just to shorten the address for the purpose

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Speaker 1: of messages that have a real strict character limit like Twitter,

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Speaker 1: And of course Twitter has its own well purchased a

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Speaker 1: u r L shortener so that if you are posting

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Speaker 1: a web address into Twitter, it will automatically shorten it

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Speaker 1: for you so that it can conserve some of those characters,

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Speaker 1: because the hundred forty precious characters is you know, you've

435
00:26:32,080 --> 00:26:34,600
Speaker 1: gotta you gotta maximize that as much as you can

436
00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 1: in order to get your point across. Now, the redirect

437
00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:40,520
Speaker 1: gets cross reference to the u r L and thus

438
00:26:40,640 --> 00:26:44,439
Speaker 1: the IP address of the shortened web address, So that

439
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:48,480
Speaker 1: means there's a registry database for the shortened links. Uh,

440
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:52,199
Speaker 1: So you have the short version that's cross reference to

441
00:26:52,359 --> 00:26:54,560
Speaker 1: the long version of the web address, which in turn

442
00:26:55,200 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 1: is reference to the IP address of the actual web

443
00:26:58,560 --> 00:27:01,200
Speaker 1: server that the page lives on. It's a lot of

444
00:27:01,280 --> 00:27:06,800
Speaker 1: different degrees of separation, but it's still the basic same principle. Now,

445
00:27:06,840 --> 00:27:09,960
Speaker 1: this idea was first patented in two thousand five. The

446
00:27:10,000 --> 00:27:12,800
Speaker 1: pattern was filed back in two thousands, so this was

447
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:15,919
Speaker 1: something people were thinking about pretty early on. Keeping in

448
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:18,280
Speaker 1: mind that the web really only got started in the

449
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:22,000
Speaker 1: early nineties. One issue with these services is that if

450
00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:25,840
Speaker 1: the entity that maintains the registry database goes out of business,

451
00:27:26,280 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 1: the links go dead, and that happens whether or not

452
00:27:29,680 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 1: the destination website is working or has gone away as well. So,

453
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:36,600
Speaker 1: in other words, let's say that I post a blog

454
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:38,879
Speaker 1: a blog post where I use a shortened u r

455
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:41,680
Speaker 1: L in it, but the company that actually made the

456
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:44,960
Speaker 1: short u r L shortener and maintained the registry goes

457
00:27:44,960 --> 00:27:48,640
Speaker 1: out of business, then that lincolns up being dead, even

458
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:51,480
Speaker 1: if the website I linked to is still perfectly fine,

459
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:54,600
Speaker 1: whereas if I had used the full web address, then

460
00:27:54,760 --> 00:27:57,800
Speaker 1: the link would presumably still work just fine, assuming that

461
00:27:57,840 --> 00:28:01,160
Speaker 1: no one had changed anything on the or end. So

462
00:28:01,240 --> 00:28:03,199
Speaker 1: that is a downside. In fact, that some people have

463
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:06,480
Speaker 1: really criticized u r L shorteners for that very reason,

464
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:10,680
Speaker 1: saying that you are destabilizing the Internet by using them.

465
00:28:10,720 --> 00:28:13,000
Speaker 1: Here's a little bit of trivia about u r L s.

466
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:16,679
Speaker 1: Tim Burners Lee has some regrets about how you are

467
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:19,399
Speaker 1: L s are actually structured. He feels some sense of

468
00:28:19,440 --> 00:28:24,359
Speaker 1: responsibility for this, having played a part in creating the standards,

469
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:28,159
Speaker 1: and for one, he says that he really wishes that

470
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:31,280
Speaker 1: he had not used a double slash after h T

471
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:35,000
Speaker 1: T P colon. He says the colon it means they

472
00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:37,359
Speaker 1: could have used a single slash. Think of all the

473
00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:41,000
Speaker 1: time you would have saved in your life not having

474
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:46,240
Speaker 1: to have put two slashes in. I mean two slashes

475
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:48,240
Speaker 1: would be awesome in some cases, like it would be

476
00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:51,800
Speaker 1: an amazing version of guns and roses, But for web

477
00:28:51,840 --> 00:28:55,800
Speaker 1: addresses that could get pretty irritating. He also which says

478
00:28:55,840 --> 00:28:58,320
Speaker 1: he wishes that he had used slashes instead of dots

479
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:03,160
Speaker 1: to separate each element in a web address. So for

480
00:29:03,280 --> 00:29:07,600
Speaker 1: the example of h T T P colon slash slash

481
00:29:07,880 --> 00:29:13,360
Speaker 1: www dot how stuff works dot com, that would instead

482
00:29:13,440 --> 00:29:20,040
Speaker 1: become h T T P colon slash www slash how

483
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:24,720
Speaker 1: stuff works slash calm. So things would look a lot

484
00:29:24,760 --> 00:29:27,120
Speaker 1: different if Tim burns Ley could go back and do

485
00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: it all over again. But now we've already established what

486
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: the standards are, so it's too late, and we just

487
00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 1: have to struggle through with our dots and extra slashes,

488
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:39,560
Speaker 1: and that's all all we can all we can do. Really,

489
00:29:39,880 --> 00:29:42,360
Speaker 1: here's another fun bit of trivia. So in May of

490
00:29:44,240 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 1: news broke that Google's Chrome browser now has an experimental

491
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:51,640
Speaker 1: new feature in it that is an option that uses

492
00:29:51,760 --> 00:29:56,240
Speaker 1: ultrasonic sound waves to transmit u r L data to

493
00:29:56,360 --> 00:30:00,680
Speaker 1: nearby devices that have microphones. So ultrasonics on waves are

494
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:04,040
Speaker 1: well outside the range of human hearing, so you wouldn't

495
00:30:04,080 --> 00:30:07,400
Speaker 1: hear anything when you use this. This actual feature, and

496
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:09,680
Speaker 1: instead of having to copy and paste a u r

497
00:30:09,840 --> 00:30:13,480
Speaker 1: L from a web address into a message and then

498
00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:16,160
Speaker 1: sending that message onto somebody to say, hey, check out

499
00:30:16,160 --> 00:30:18,560
Speaker 1: this link, assuming that that person is in the same

500
00:30:18,600 --> 00:30:21,760
Speaker 1: area that you are in, you could press a little

501
00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 1: button and a your computer speaker would omit this ultrasonic chirp,

502
00:30:27,360 --> 00:30:30,680
Speaker 1: which again you would be unable to hear, but someone

503
00:30:30,720 --> 00:30:33,600
Speaker 1: else with a computer or mobile device that has a

504
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:37,040
Speaker 1: microphone attached to it could have that get picked up

505
00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:41,760
Speaker 1: by the device and it would translate the chirp into

506
00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:45,040
Speaker 1: a u r L, which then you could visit. So

507
00:30:45,320 --> 00:30:47,680
Speaker 1: if I found a really awesome website and I wanted

508
00:30:47,680 --> 00:30:49,920
Speaker 1: to share it with folks, here at how stuff works.

509
00:30:50,400 --> 00:30:53,400
Speaker 1: I could tell people, hey, you know, get ready to

510
00:30:53,400 --> 00:30:56,600
Speaker 1: to listen with your computers, and then press a little

511
00:30:56,600 --> 00:31:00,520
Speaker 1: button and transmit it. Just kind of neat. Now here's

512
00:31:00,520 --> 00:31:07,440
Speaker 1: some not so fun trivia. One common practice that has

513
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:11,240
Speaker 1: been an issue since web addresses have become a thing

514
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 1: is for competitors to register u r l's that are

515
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:18,560
Speaker 1: misspellings or typos of their chief competition so that they

516
00:31:18,600 --> 00:31:22,720
Speaker 1: themselves can grab that traffic. In other words, imagine that

517
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:29,000
Speaker 1: you are Coca Cola and you end up UH registering

518
00:31:29,480 --> 00:31:32,720
Speaker 1: p w p s I dot com, so you're one

519
00:31:32,800 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 1: letter off from Pepsi. You've just you've gone instead of

520
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 1: doing EVE, done W, which is one key over from

521
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 1: the E key, And the reason you've done it is

522
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:45,280
Speaker 1: so that anyone who makes the typo trying to visit

523
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:49,280
Speaker 1: Pepsi's website instead goes to your website, and your website

524
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:52,640
Speaker 1: might just be filled with propaganda about how coke is

525
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:54,720
Speaker 1: awesome and Pepsi is stupid, and you should just buy

526
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:58,080
Speaker 1: coke products and not Pepsi products. This kind of U

527
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:01,240
Speaker 1: r L hijacking was really common still is fairly common,

528
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:04,080
Speaker 1: not as common today as it used to be, in

529
00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: large part because companies have gotten savvy to it. So

530
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:12,480
Speaker 1: a lot of companies will buy various variations of their

531
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 1: brand names, including common misspellings of them, so that way,

532
00:32:16,840 --> 00:32:21,160
Speaker 1: if someone types in the u r L, they get

533
00:32:21,160 --> 00:32:24,240
Speaker 1: redirected to the actual website they wanted to go to,

534
00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 1: as opposed to going to some other site that is

535
00:32:28,120 --> 00:32:31,400
Speaker 1: unrelated to the brand. So we're seeing it less and

536
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:34,440
Speaker 1: less simply because companies are taking the effort to prevent

537
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 1: it from happening, but it still can happen. There's nothing

538
00:32:37,040 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 1: that protects the system from that sort of stuff. In fact,

539
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:44,160
Speaker 1: it would be kind of antithetical to the spirit of

540
00:32:44,200 --> 00:32:48,840
Speaker 1: the Internet to build in restrictions based on that. But

541
00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:52,600
Speaker 1: worse than that, worse than U r L hijacking by far,

542
00:32:53,520 --> 00:32:56,760
Speaker 1: is d n S hijacking. It's also known as d

543
00:32:56,880 --> 00:33:00,719
Speaker 1: n S redirection. This is when someone read REX traffic

544
00:33:00,760 --> 00:33:04,240
Speaker 1: to a rogue DNS server instead of the legitimate one

545
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:07,680
Speaker 1: that's on your Internet service provider. So remember earlier I

546
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:10,080
Speaker 1: said that if you typed in a web address and

547
00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:14,280
Speaker 1: in your browser and you hit enter, normally your computer

548
00:33:14,320 --> 00:33:17,320
Speaker 1: would send this message along to the DNS server that's

549
00:33:17,400 --> 00:33:20,440
Speaker 1: on your Internet service provider, which would then follow the

550
00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:23,240
Speaker 1: set of rules to make sure it found the correct

551
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 1: IP address to send to your browser, and then you

552
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:28,160
Speaker 1: would end up retrieving the proper web page, the one

553
00:33:28,200 --> 00:33:32,000
Speaker 1: that you wanted. But there's some types of malware that

554
00:33:32,080 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 1: you can encounter that will make fundamental changes to your

555
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:39,520
Speaker 1: computer or the web browser. Uh. There are a lot

556
00:33:39,520 --> 00:33:41,920
Speaker 1: of different types of malware that can do this, and

557
00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 1: the ones I'm specifically talking about here would change the

558
00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:48,720
Speaker 1: DNS settings on your computer so it's pointed to a

559
00:33:48,760 --> 00:33:52,320
Speaker 1: different DNS server, one that's owned by somebody else and

560
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 1: not the I s P. So when you open up

561
00:33:55,520 --> 00:33:58,560
Speaker 1: your web browser and you type in a web address

562
00:33:58,560 --> 00:34:02,360
Speaker 1: and this malware has affected your computer, instead of sending

563
00:34:02,360 --> 00:34:04,800
Speaker 1: it to the DNS server on the s I s P,

564
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:07,560
Speaker 1: it sends it to this rogue DNS server, which could

565
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:11,799
Speaker 1: point you anywhere. It does not have to correlate your

566
00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:15,319
Speaker 1: web address to the proper i P address and send

567
00:34:15,360 --> 00:34:18,640
Speaker 1: you to the right place. It might send you someplace,

568
00:34:18,920 --> 00:34:21,680
Speaker 1: you know, random, which would kind of be a case

569
00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:25,239
Speaker 1: of someone being mischievous and and and just sort of

570
00:34:25,400 --> 00:34:29,160
Speaker 1: destructive for no particular reason. Or it might send you

571
00:34:29,239 --> 00:34:31,719
Speaker 1: to a website that has other malware on it so

572
00:34:31,760 --> 00:34:35,360
Speaker 1: that your computer gets infected by even more malware. Or

573
00:34:36,400 --> 00:34:38,200
Speaker 1: you might end up on one of those websites that

574
00:34:38,239 --> 00:34:41,319
Speaker 1: just has tons of ads on it, because that's how

575
00:34:41,360 --> 00:34:44,680
Speaker 1: the hacker is getting revenue. Every time you go on

576
00:34:44,760 --> 00:34:48,080
Speaker 1: the ads. All these different ad impressions happened, and the

577
00:34:48,120 --> 00:34:52,719
Speaker 1: hacker is getting paid on a per impression basis. Um or,

578
00:34:53,400 --> 00:34:57,680
Speaker 1: you know, you might end up having a mirror site,

579
00:34:57,880 --> 00:35:00,480
Speaker 1: one that looks like an official site. It is there

580
00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:03,799
Speaker 1: in order to phish data from you, to convince you

581
00:35:03,880 --> 00:35:06,600
Speaker 1: that you are on a legitimate website, but in fact

582
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:09,080
Speaker 1: you're on a fake one, and the data you are

583
00:35:09,080 --> 00:35:11,319
Speaker 1: sharing is going straight to the hacker, giving them even

584
00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:18,600
Speaker 1: more power over you. That's a particularly nasty attack. Um Now. Fortunately,

585
00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:21,760
Speaker 1: it's the sort of thing you can largely prevent because

586
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:26,200
Speaker 1: if you're careful, if you have UH virus protection on

587
00:35:26,239 --> 00:35:28,799
Speaker 1: your computer, if you have a good firewall set up,

588
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:32,719
Speaker 1: you are limiting your exposure to that sort of stuff.

589
00:35:32,719 --> 00:35:34,680
Speaker 1: If you're careful about the links you visit. You know,

590
00:35:34,719 --> 00:35:38,200
Speaker 1: all of these things the basic security rules of using

591
00:35:38,239 --> 00:35:40,800
Speaker 1: the internet. If you follow those, you should be in

592
00:35:40,840 --> 00:35:45,120
Speaker 1: pretty good shape. You probably won't encounter the d n

593
00:35:45,320 --> 00:35:49,960
Speaker 1: S redirect attack. You could have cases of hackers actually

594
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:53,600
Speaker 1: targeting DNS servers, but that's something that we as users

595
00:35:53,640 --> 00:35:55,880
Speaker 1: have no control over, and in fact, I s p

596
00:35:56,080 --> 00:36:00,760
Speaker 1: s put a lot of money into protecting the servers have. Obviously,

597
00:36:00,800 --> 00:36:04,719
Speaker 1: their entire business depends upon the viability of those machines,

598
00:36:04,880 --> 00:36:07,520
Speaker 1: so it's one that we don't have to worry about

599
00:36:07,600 --> 00:36:11,959
Speaker 1: quite as much. Anyway. That is how you are L's work.

600
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:14,560
Speaker 1: It's why web addresses are the way they are, It's

601
00:36:14,640 --> 00:36:17,000
Speaker 1: why so many are in English. I thought it'd be

602
00:36:17,200 --> 00:36:19,279
Speaker 1: kind of fun to just sort of run down those

603
00:36:19,280 --> 00:36:22,279
Speaker 1: basic rules so that we could have a better understanding

604
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:24,239
Speaker 1: of it. I look forward to doing more of these

605
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:26,560
Speaker 1: in the future, where I take different types of basic

606
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:29,879
Speaker 1: technology and kind of explain them. This is just one

607
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:31,719
Speaker 1: type of episode that I like to do here at

608
00:36:31,719 --> 00:36:35,440
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff. Obviously, I also enjoy having guests, either as

609
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:38,560
Speaker 1: guest hosts so they talk to me about certain types

610
00:36:38,600 --> 00:36:43,200
Speaker 1: of technology, or an interview subject. I of course love

611
00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:46,360
Speaker 1: to concentrate on all things technology. It doesn't have to

612
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:48,880
Speaker 1: be a specific technology. It could be a company or

613
00:36:49,040 --> 00:36:52,799
Speaker 1: persona in tech. It could be how technology affects society.

614
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:55,040
Speaker 1: I like to look at all these different things. You

615
00:36:55,040 --> 00:36:58,440
Speaker 1: guys have been sending me some incredible suggestions for future topics,

616
00:36:58,520 --> 00:37:00,959
Speaker 1: many of which I'm going to be tackling very very soon.

617
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:04,640
Speaker 1: I want you to keep doing that, keep sending me

618
00:37:04,680 --> 00:37:07,719
Speaker 1: those suggestions. The address that you can write to is

619
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:10,799
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuffwards dot com, or you can

620
00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:14,279
Speaker 1: drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook or on

621
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:17,239
Speaker 1: Tumbler at all three. I am tex Stuff, your H

622
00:37:17,560 --> 00:37:19,480
Speaker 1: s W. And I look forward to hearing from you,

623
00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:28,640
Speaker 1: and you'll hear from me again really soon. For more

624
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:31,520
Speaker 1: on this, embattens another topic because it has to works

625
00:37:31,560 --> 00:37:40,920
Speaker 1: dot Com