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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio

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Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? It's time for a

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Speaker 1: tech Stuff classic episode. This episode originally published on June

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Speaker 1: twenty nine, two thousand fifteen. It is titled What's My Address?

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Speaker 1: It's all about Internet addresses and network addresses and why

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Speaker 1: those are important. Let's sit back and listen. So to

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

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Speaker 1: a 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 hears 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 address,

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Speaker 1: an I p address. Now, an IP address is sort

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Speaker 1: of like a phone number or a physical address. It's

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Speaker 1: the number that includes the information needed for data to

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

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

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Speaker 1: 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. Now.

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

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

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Speaker 1: billion addresses that could be assigned. An i p 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 fifty five, meaning they are

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Speaker 1: two hundred fifty six total potential numbers for each one

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Speaker 1: and each of those four groups of numbers separated from

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Speaker 1: the others by dots. Each of those numbers groups they

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Speaker 1: represent a group of eight bits. So here's an example

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Speaker 1: of an ip v four IP address. It could be

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Speaker 1: two one six dot to seven dot six one dot

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Speaker 1: one three seven. That's just a random example, and four

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Speaker 1: billion addresses. Sounds like a bunch, but it didn't take

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Speaker 1: that long for those addresses to start getting scarce. The

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Speaker 1: address pool was exhausted in February of two thousand eleven.

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Speaker 1: And you might have heard some stories about how certain companies,

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Speaker 1: like big software companies UH that we're relying on I

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Speaker 1: p v four have had some issues running out of

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Speaker 1: IP addresses to assign to people on their networks, so

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

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Speaker 1: We're not having any luck connecting to the Internet because

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Speaker 1: they had run out of IP addresses to assign to

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Speaker 1: their employees. It's one of the reasons there's been a

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Speaker 1: big push to move from i p v four to

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Speaker 1: i p v six, which uses eight bit numbers, not

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: power address is available in I p V six. Why

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Speaker 1: am I putting the number in those terms because to

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Speaker 1: actually spell out the number in full would probably take

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Speaker 1: most of this podcast, and that would only be interesting

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Speaker 1: for a few seconds. So how can we put into

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Speaker 1: terms what that actually means? Well, there'd be so many

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Speaker 1: addresses that even if you were adding a huge number

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Speaker 1: every pico second, it would probably last until our son

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Speaker 1: actually burns out. So I think will be good in

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

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Speaker 1: great shape until the sun burns out, at which point

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Speaker 1: will have other problems to worry about. Now, an I

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Speaker 1: p v six address is a little more complicated than

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Speaker 1: the I p V four one. So uh, if you

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Speaker 1: were to look at one of these addresses, an example

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Speaker 1: would sound something like this. To zero zero one, colon

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: nine six five to It is significantly longer. 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 E d B A colon

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Speaker 1: colon three to seven colon two. That double colon would

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Speaker 1: represent that everything in between those were just empty groups

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Speaker 1: of zeros. So that's one way of shortening it. Now.

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Speaker 1: Your own computer's IP address is not likely to stay

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Speaker 1: the same across multiple uses. Instead receives an IP address

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

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

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Speaker 1: it can shift IP addresses around whenever necessary, But other

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: of their new IP address whenever they changed or else.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: static IP address, So it's going to be assigned to

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: specific 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 sometimes it's written down

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

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Speaker 1: associated with the static IP address, and this is how

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

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Speaker 1: machine readable language, but it's not really useful to human

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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 i L is military.

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

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Speaker 1: RU 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

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Speaker 1: as then there's a slash after that top level domain,

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Speaker 1: so maybe it was how stuff works dot Com 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 may be. So for that to work, you

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

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

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Speaker 1: two different sites that both use www. Dot house stuff

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Speaker 1: works 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 I see

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Speaker 1: this is a server a service. Rather under i CAN,

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

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Speaker 1: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and numbers, and i can's

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: go straight to the house stuff Works homepage and nowhere else.

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Speaker 1: I'll 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 map 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 d n s. The Network Information Center

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Speaker 1: maintained a text file that had web addresses mapped to

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Speaker 1: I P addresses. So, in other words, if you had

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Speaker 1: a web address back in those early early days of

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Speaker 1: the Internet we're talking pre then your web address appeared

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Speaker 1: in this text file and was corresponding. You know, it

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Speaker 1: corresponded to the actual I P address of the web

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Speaker 1: server that contained that web page. So if you had

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Speaker 1: a website at that time, then it would be inside

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Speaker 1: this text file. But as you probably can imagine, this

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Speaker 1: text file got really big, really quickly as more and

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Speaker 1: more entity started jumping on the Internet and and putting

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Speaker 1: web pages on the Internet. This text file grew to

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Speaker 1: an unmanageable size, so it was inefficient to keep a

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Speaker 1: single text document as the reference. It was taking too

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Speaker 1: long to cross reference web addresses to IP addresses. It

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Speaker 1: was actually increasing the amount of time it would take

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Speaker 1: for you to go to a website through your browser

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Speaker 1: because it was just taking too long to resolve the

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Speaker 1: web address name. So that's when the University of Wisconsin

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Speaker 1: formed the Domain Name System and it automatically maps web

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Speaker 1: addresses to IP addresses. So when you type in an address,

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Speaker 1: your request goes out over your network the Internet service

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Speaker 1: provider that you use, UM, it goes over their network

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Speaker 1: to their domain name server. Now, not every computer on

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Speaker 1: the Domain Name system has every web address and IP

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Speaker 1: address stored in it. It would be crazy if they did.

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Speaker 1: So you type in a web address, it goes out

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Speaker 1: over your Internet service providers network to the DNS server. UH.

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Speaker 1: It consults its registry to see if it in fact

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Speaker 1: has the information needed, and if it doesn't, it works

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Speaker 1: with the other servers on the d n S to

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Speaker 1: find that information send it to your computer so that

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Speaker 1: it can contact the appropriate web server and get the

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Speaker 1: file that it once. So, if you're using a browser

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Speaker 1: to look up a web page, your request goes to

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Speaker 1: the d n S and that sends the IP address

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Speaker 1: of the appropriate server once it's identified, it to your browser.

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Speaker 1: Your browser then essentially sends a request to the web

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Speaker 1: server that has that particular page that file and says hey,

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Speaker 1: can I see that? And the web server, assuming everything

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

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Speaker 1: and sends the file like the web page to your

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Speaker 1: browser and uh, you know, travels through the network in

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Speaker 1: this way. It's not it's not a direct pathway from

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Speaker 1: the server to your computer necessarily, and then it shows

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Speaker 1: up in your browser. Now, all this stuff happens in

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Speaker 1: fractions of a second um. Sometimes it can take a

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Speaker 1: little longer, depending upon the stats of the network and

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Speaker 1: the amount of traffic involved, but it's still an incredibly

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Speaker 1: fast process to especially when you consider how much is

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Speaker 1: actually going on here with all the cross referencing to

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Speaker 1: go from web address address to IP address to sending

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Speaker 1: the signal to responding to it, it's amazing. We'll be

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Speaker 1: back with more of this classic episode of tech stuff

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Speaker 1: after this quick break. Now, I've got a couple of

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Speaker 1: other things I wanted to mention. One of those is

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Speaker 1: why are so many web addresses written in English? Now

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Speaker 1: not all of them are, and in fact this has

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

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Speaker 1: for a long time, English was the dominant language in

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

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

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Speaker 1: reason 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: is for creating web addresses were mostly English speaking Americans,

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

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

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Speaker 1: those rules included Tim Berners Lee, who worked for CERN

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Speaker 1: and was what we considered 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, you know,

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

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

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Speaker 1: or you might have to insert the letters one by

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Speaker 1: one using a the insert um uh option. It's not

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Speaker 1: the easiest thing in the world to do. Um So

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Speaker 1: that was one of the drawbacks to the Web for

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Speaker 1: many years. And it wasn't until two thousand nine that

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Speaker 1: i CAN approved the use of international allied domain names.

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Speaker 1: That meant that Web addresses could finally include non English

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Speaker 1: characters in them. And coincidentally, perhaps two thousand nine was

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Speaker 1: also the year that the United States government gave up

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Speaker 1: control of i CAN and they transitioned it to a

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Speaker 1: multi stakeholder governance model. And you might wonder what that means.

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Speaker 1: It's it's essentially i CAN as a nonprofit organization and

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Speaker 1: it only answers to stakeholders rather than having to answer

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Speaker 1: to the United States government. And you might wonder why

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Speaker 1: it was, I can ever answering to the U. S

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Speaker 1: Government in the first place, But keep in mind the

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Speaker 1: Internet itself is essentially the product of a US government project.

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Speaker 1: It all started back with ARPA back in those days.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't even DARPA yet, with ARPA Net, which established

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Speaker 1: the general structure and protocols that would be used later

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Speaker 1: and evolve into the ones that we use for the Internet.

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Speaker 1: So the United States was very heavily involved in the

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Speaker 1: construction and the standardization of the Internet, which is why

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

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Speaker 1: you are els can now also contain emojis, those little

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Speaker 1: symbols that mean all sorts of stuff. These days. Used

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Speaker 1: to be just be smiley and frowny faces and winky faces,

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

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Speaker 1: a couple of different examples of this. Coke launched an

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: there you are. L was www dot airplane, Emoji, slot machine, Emoji,

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Speaker 1: 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 emoji.

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Speaker 1: You are 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: characters rather when typing in web addresses. It's it's very

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

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

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Speaker 1: into it, you then have to construct them some other way.

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Speaker 1: So I imagine most of these web addresses will have

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Speaker 1: a language variant of them, not just the emoji ones.

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Speaker 1: All right, so we've got a couple of other things

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Speaker 1: we need to cover before I can wrap up here.

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Speaker 1: One of those is what about you are l shorteners?

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Speaker 1: So these are techniques that redirect traffic to a domain

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Speaker 1: 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 will go straight to

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Speaker 1: my site. Sometimes it's more of like a random seeming

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Speaker 1: string of letters and numbers, which makes it a little

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Speaker 1: harder to communicate, at least verbally. But at any rate,

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Speaker 1: these techniques are meant to make it easier to navigate

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Speaker 1: to a specific page that otherwise has a long or

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Speaker 1: cumbersome web address. It can be use for lots of

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Speaker 1: different reasons. It can also be used to track traffic, So,

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Speaker 1: in other words, it's a strategy so that you can

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Speaker 1: tag traffic for one reason or another in order to

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Speaker 1: keep an eye on what's going on with a site,

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Speaker 1: So in other words, it's not just a redirect. It's

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Speaker 1: also kind of tagging to get an idea of traffic patterns.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it's used in a sneaky way to disguise the

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Speaker 1: actual destination of the redirect. So in other words, I

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Speaker 1: could say, Hey, look at this really cool website, and

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Speaker 1: I use a u r L shortener, and unless you

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Speaker 1: have a means of previewing where that shortener is pointing to,

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Speaker 1: you might click on it not knowing what the destination

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Speaker 1: is and it might end up being a place where

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of malware, or maybe it's a website

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Speaker 1: that has tons of pop up ads and I'm really

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Speaker 1: just trying to drive traffic to it because that way

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Speaker 1: I can drive up revenue. Um. There are a lot

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Speaker 1: of kind of ways to abuse the shortened u r

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Speaker 1: L s. Sometimes it's just to shorten the address the

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Speaker 1: purpose of messages that have a real strict character limit

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Speaker 1: like Twitter, and of course Twitter has its own well.

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Speaker 1: It purchased a u r L shortener so that if

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Speaker 1: you are posting a web address into Twitter, it will

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Speaker 1: automatically shorten it for you so that it can conserve

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Speaker 1: some of those characters, because a d forty precious characters

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Speaker 1: is you know, you've gotta you gotta maximize that as

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Speaker 1: much as you can in order to get your point across.

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Speaker 1: We've got more to say in this classic episode of

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Speaker 1: tech stuff after these quick messages. Now, the redirect gets

435
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:41,600
Speaker 1: cross reference to the u r L and thus the

436
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:45,520
Speaker 1: IP address of the shortened web address. So that means

437
00:26:45,520 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 1: there's a registry database for the shortened links. Uh. So

438
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:53,199
Speaker 1: you have the short version that's cross reference to the

439
00:26:53,320 --> 00:26:56,080
Speaker 1: long version of the web address, which in turn is

440
00:26:56,480 --> 00:26:59,600
Speaker 1: reference to the IP address of the actual web server

441
00:26:59,760 --> 00:27:02,440
Speaker 1: that the page lives on. It's a lot of different

442
00:27:02,960 --> 00:27:07,600
Speaker 1: degrees of separation, but it's still the basic same principle. Now,

443
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:10,760
Speaker 1: this idea was first patented in two thousand five. The

444
00:27:10,760 --> 00:27:13,639
Speaker 1: pattern was filed back in two thousands, so this was

445
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:16,720
Speaker 1: something people were thinking about pretty early on, keeping in

446
00:27:16,760 --> 00:27:19,080
Speaker 1: mind that the web really only got started in the

447
00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:22,760
Speaker 1: early nineties. One issue with these services is that if

448
00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:26,640
Speaker 1: the entity that maintains the registry database goes out of business,

449
00:27:27,080 --> 00:27:30,359
Speaker 1: the links go dead. And that happens whether or not

450
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:34,439
Speaker 1: the destination website is working or has gone away as well.

451
00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:36,919
Speaker 1: So in other words, let's say that I post a

452
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:39,480
Speaker 1: blog a blog post where I use a shortened U

453
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:42,399
Speaker 1: r L in it, but the company that actually made

454
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:45,480
Speaker 1: the short U r L shortener and maintained the registry

455
00:27:45,560 --> 00:27:48,920
Speaker 1: goes out of business, then that lincolns up being dead,

456
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:52,320
Speaker 1: even if the website I linked to is still perfectly fine,

457
00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:55,399
Speaker 1: whereas if I had used the full web address, then

458
00:27:55,560 --> 00:27:58,560
Speaker 1: the link would presumably still work just fine, assuming that

459
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:02,119
Speaker 1: no one had changed anything the other end. So that

460
00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:05,200
Speaker 1: is a downside. In fact, some people have really criticized

461
00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:07,800
Speaker 1: you r L shorteners for that very reason, saying that

462
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:11,800
Speaker 1: you are destabilizing the Internet by using them. Here's a

463
00:28:11,800 --> 00:28:14,680
Speaker 1: little bit of trivia about U r L s. Tim

464
00:28:14,760 --> 00:28:17,639
Speaker 1: berners Lee has some regrets about how you are L

465
00:28:17,720 --> 00:28:21,160
Speaker 1: s are actually structured. He feels some sense of responsibility

466
00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:25,080
Speaker 1: for this, having played a part in creating the standards,

467
00:28:25,800 --> 00:28:28,959
Speaker 1: and for one, he says that he really wishes that

468
00:28:29,040 --> 00:28:32,080
Speaker 1: he had not used a double slash after h T

469
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 1: T P colon. He says, the colon it means they

470
00:28:35,800 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 1: could have used a single slash. Think of all the

471
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:41,760
Speaker 1: time you would have saved in your life not having

472
00:28:41,800 --> 00:28:47,040
Speaker 1: to have put two slashes in. I mean, two slashes

473
00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:49,000
Speaker 1: would be awesome in some cases, like it would be

474
00:28:49,040 --> 00:28:52,600
Speaker 1: an amazing version of guns and roses, but for web

475
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:56,600
Speaker 1: addresses that could get pretty irritating. He also which says

476
00:28:56,600 --> 00:28:59,120
Speaker 1: he wishes that he had used slashes instead of dots

477
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:03,960
Speaker 1: to separate each element in a web address. So for

478
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:08,400
Speaker 1: the example of h T T P colon slash slash

479
00:29:08,680 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 1: www dot how stuff works dot com, that would instead

480
00:29:14,240 --> 00:29:20,840
Speaker 1: become h T T P colon slash www slash how

481
00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:25,520
Speaker 1: stuff works slash calm. So things would look a lot

482
00:29:25,560 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 1: different if Tim burns Ley could go back and do

483
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:30,600
Speaker 1: it all over again. But now we've already established what

484
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 1: standards are, so it's too late and we just have

485
00:29:34,080 --> 00:29:37,840
Speaker 1: to struggle through with our dots and extra slashes, and

486
00:29:37,840 --> 00:29:40,360
Speaker 1: that's all all we can all we can do. Really,

487
00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 1: here's another fun bit of trivia. So in May of

488
00:29:45,040 --> 00:29:49,480
Speaker 1: news broke that Google's Chrome browser now has an experimental

489
00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:52,400
Speaker 1: new feature in it that is an option that uses

490
00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:57,040
Speaker 1: ultrasonic sound waves to transmit u r L data to

491
00:29:57,160 --> 00:30:01,440
Speaker 1: nearby devices that have microphones. So ultrasonic sound waves are

492
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:04,840
Speaker 1: well outside the range of human hearing, so you wouldn't

493
00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:08,200
Speaker 1: hear anything when you use this this actual feature, and

494
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:10,440
Speaker 1: instead of having to copy and paste a u r

495
00:30:10,600 --> 00:30:14,280
Speaker 1: L from a web address into a message and then

496
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:16,760
Speaker 1: sending that message on to somebody to say, hey, check

497
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:19,040
Speaker 1: out this link, assuming that that person is in the

498
00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:22,280
Speaker 1: same area that you are in, you could press a

499
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:26,880
Speaker 1: little button and a your computer speaker would omit this

500
00:30:27,000 --> 00:30:30,120
Speaker 1: ultrasonic chirp, which again you would be unable to hear.

501
00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 1: But someone else with a computer or mobile device that

502
00:30:34,120 --> 00:30:37,240
Speaker 1: has a microphone attached to it could have that get

503
00:30:37,240 --> 00:30:41,479
Speaker 1: picked up by the device and it would translate the

504
00:30:41,560 --> 00:30:45,000
Speaker 1: chirp into a u r L, which then you could visit.

505
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:48,200
Speaker 1: So if I found a really awesome website and I

506
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:50,720
Speaker 1: wanted to share it with folks, here at how stuff works.

507
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:54,160
Speaker 1: I could tell people, hey, you know, get ready to

508
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:57,400
Speaker 1: to listen with your computers, and then press a little

509
00:30:57,400 --> 00:31:01,280
Speaker 1: button and transmit it. Just kind of neat. Now here's

510
00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:08,240
Speaker 1: some not so fun trivia. One common practice that has

511
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:12,040
Speaker 1: been an issue since web addresses have become a thing

512
00:31:12,160 --> 00:31:14,680
Speaker 1: is for competitors to register u r l s that

513
00:31:14,720 --> 00:31:19,040
Speaker 1: are misspellings or typos of their chief competition, so that

514
00:31:19,120 --> 00:31:23,320
Speaker 1: they themselves can grab that traffic. In other words, imagine

515
00:31:23,360 --> 00:31:28,880
Speaker 1: that you are Coca Cola and you end up UH

516
00:31:29,120 --> 00:31:33,320
Speaker 1: registering p w p s I dot com, so you're

517
00:31:33,360 --> 00:31:36,080
Speaker 1: one letter off from Pepsi. You've just you've gone instead

518
00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:39,280
Speaker 1: of doing EVE, done W, which is one key over

519
00:31:39,680 --> 00:31:43,240
Speaker 1: from the E key, And the reason you've done it

520
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:45,720
Speaker 1: is so that anyone who makes the typo trying to

521
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:49,600
Speaker 1: visit Pepsi's website instead goes to your website, and your

522
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 1: website might just be filled with propaganda about how coke

523
00:31:53,360 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 1: is awesome and Pepsi is stupid and you should just

524
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:58,720
Speaker 1: buy coke products and not Pepsi products. This kind of

525
00:31:58,800 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 1: U r L hijacking was really common still is fairly common,

526
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:04,880
Speaker 1: not as common today as it used to be, in

527
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:08,440
Speaker 1: large part because companies have gotten savvy to it. So

528
00:32:08,480 --> 00:32:13,240
Speaker 1: a lot of companies will buy various variations of their

529
00:32:13,280 --> 00:32:17,120
Speaker 1: brand names, including common misspellings of them, so that way,

530
00:32:17,640 --> 00:32:21,920
Speaker 1: if someone types in the u r L, they get

531
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:25,040
Speaker 1: redirected to the actual website they wanted to go to,

532
00:32:25,280 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 1: as opposed to going to some other site that is

533
00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:32,200
Speaker 1: unrelated to the brand. So we're seeing it less and

534
00:32:32,240 --> 00:32:35,240
Speaker 1: less simply because companies are taking the effort to prevent

535
00:32:35,280 --> 00:32:37,800
Speaker 1: it from happening, but it still can happen. There's nothing

536
00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:42,240
Speaker 1: that protects the system from that sort of stuff. In fact,

537
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:44,960
Speaker 1: it would be kind of antithetical to the spirit of

538
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 1: the Internet to build in restrictions based on that. But

539
00:32:49,720 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: worse than that, worse than U r L hijacking by far,

540
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:57,560
Speaker 1: is d n S hijacking. It's also known as d

541
00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:01,600
Speaker 1: n S redirection. This is when someone redirects traffic to

542
00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:05,240
Speaker 1: a rogue DNS server instead of the legitimate one that's

543
00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:08,720
Speaker 1: on your Internet service provider. So remember earlier I said

544
00:33:08,720 --> 00:33:11,280
Speaker 1: that if you typed in a web address and in

545
00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 1: your browser and you hit enter, normally, your computer would

546
00:33:15,320 --> 00:33:18,280
Speaker 1: send this message along to the DNS server that's on

547
00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:21,480
Speaker 1: your Internet service provider, which would then follow the set

548
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 1: of rules to make sure it found the correct IP

549
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:26,680
Speaker 1: address to send to your browser, and then you would

550
00:33:26,800 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 1: end up retrieving the proper web page, the one that

551
00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 1: you wanted. But there's some types of malware that you

552
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:37,840
Speaker 1: can encounter that will make fundamental changes to your computer

553
00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:40,360
Speaker 1: or the web browser. Uh. There are a lot of

554
00:33:40,400 --> 00:33:42,959
Speaker 1: different types of malware that can do this, and the

555
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:46,560
Speaker 1: ones I'm specifically talking about here would change the DNS

556
00:33:46,600 --> 00:33:49,920
Speaker 1: settings on your computer so it's pointed to a different

557
00:33:50,040 --> 00:33:53,280
Speaker 1: DNS server, one that's owned by somebody else and not

558
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:56,400
Speaker 1: the I s P. So when you open up your

559
00:33:56,440 --> 00:33:59,520
Speaker 1: web browser and you type in a web address and

560
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:03,280
Speaker 1: this malware has affected your computer, instead of sending it

561
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 1: to the DNS server on the s I s P,

562
00:34:05,760 --> 00:34:08,360
Speaker 1: it sends it to this rogue DNS server, which could

563
00:34:08,520 --> 00:34:12,600
Speaker 1: point you anywhere. It does not have to correlate your

564
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 1: web address to the proper i P address and send

565
00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:19,440
Speaker 1: you to the right place. It might send you someplace,

566
00:34:19,680 --> 00:34:22,480
Speaker 1: you know, random, which would kind of be a case

567
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:26,040
Speaker 1: of someone being mischievous and and and just sort of

568
00:34:26,160 --> 00:34:29,960
Speaker 1: destructive for no particular reason. Or it might send you

569
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:32,520
Speaker 1: to a website that has other malware on it so

570
00:34:32,560 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 1: that your computer gets infected by even more malware. Or

571
00:34:37,160 --> 00:34:38,960
Speaker 1: you might end up on one of those websites that

572
00:34:39,040 --> 00:34:42,120
Speaker 1: just has tons of ads on it, because that's how

573
00:34:42,120 --> 00:34:45,480
Speaker 1: the hacker is getting revenue. Every time you go on

574
00:34:45,560 --> 00:34:48,880
Speaker 1: the ads, all these different ad impressions happen, and the

575
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:53,319
Speaker 1: hacker is getting paid on a per impression basis. Um

576
00:34:53,480 --> 00:34:58,480
Speaker 1: or you know, you might end up having a mirror site,

577
00:34:58,640 --> 00:35:01,279
Speaker 1: one that looks like an official site, but is there

578
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:04,600
Speaker 1: in order to phish data from you, to convince you

579
00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:07,319
Speaker 1: that you are on a legitimate website, but in fact

580
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:09,839
Speaker 1: you're on a fake one, and the data you are

581
00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 1: sharing is going straight to the hacker, giving them even

582
00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:19,360
Speaker 1: more power over you. That's a particularly nasty attack. Um Now, Fortunately,

583
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:22,560
Speaker 1: it's the sort of thing you can largely prevent because

584
00:35:22,680 --> 00:35:27,000
Speaker 1: if you're careful, if you have UH virus protection on

585
00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:29,600
Speaker 1: your computer, if you have a good firewall set up,

586
00:35:30,200 --> 00:35:33,520
Speaker 1: you are limiting your exposure to that sort of stuff.

587
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 1: If you're careful about the links you visit. You know,

588
00:35:35,520 --> 00:35:39,000
Speaker 1: all of these things the basic security rules of using

589
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:41,600
Speaker 1: the Internet. If you follow those, you should be in

590
00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:45,920
Speaker 1: pretty good shape. You probably won't encounter the d n

591
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:50,720
Speaker 1: S redirect attack. You could have cases of hackers actually

592
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:54,400
Speaker 1: targeting DNS servers, but that's something that we as users

593
00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:56,680
Speaker 1: have no control over, and in fact, I s p

594
00:35:56,880 --> 00:36:00,720
Speaker 1: s put a lot of money into protecting the servers

595
00:36:00,719 --> 00:36:04,400
Speaker 1: they have. Obviously their entire business depends upon the viability

596
00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:07,600
Speaker 1: of those machines, so it's one that we don't have

597
00:36:07,640 --> 00:36:11,200
Speaker 1: to worry about quite as much. I hope that you

598
00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:15,040
Speaker 1: enjoyed that classic episode of tech Stuff about addresses one

599
00:36:15,080 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 1: of those topics that I think people take for granted

600
00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:20,440
Speaker 1: unless they're, you know, in the I T field, in

601
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:23,440
Speaker 1: which case they think about it a lot. If you

602
00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:25,960
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for topics I should cover in future

603
00:36:25,960 --> 00:36:28,279
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out and let me know.

604
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:30,880
Speaker 1: The best way to do that is on Twitter. The

605
00:36:30,920 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 1: handle for the show is tex Stuff hs W and

606
00:36:34,080 --> 00:36:42,560
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is

607
00:36:42,600 --> 00:36:45,719
Speaker 1: an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my

608
00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:49,480
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

609
00:36:49,600 --> 00:36:51,600
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.