Unit-5: Mail Services

5.1 Application Layer services:

5.1.1 concepts of email
5.1.2 working of email account and services
5.1.3 URL and URL types (Absolute, Relative)
5.2 Case study of email:
5.2.1 From sender to receiver (Mailer, Mail Server, Mailbox)
5.2.2 Functionality and use of protocols at different layers
5.3 Case study of locating Website:
5.3.1 URL and locating URL
5.3.2 Steps and protocols involved in accessing

5.1 Application Layer

The application layer in the OSI model is the closest layer to the end user which means that the
application layer and end user can interact directly with the software application. The application
layer programs are based on client and servers.
The Application layer includes the following functions:
Identifying communication partners: The application layer identifies the availability of
communication partners for an application with data to transmit.
Determining resource availability: The application layer determines whether sufficient
network resources are available for the requested communication.
Synchronizing communication: All the communications occur between the applications
requires cooperation which is managed by an application layer.

Services of Application Layers

1. Network Virtual terminal: An application layer allows a user to log on to a remote host.
To do so, the application creates a software emulation of a terminal at the remote host.
The user's computer talks to the software terminal, which in turn, talks to the host. The
remote host thinks that it is communicating with one of its own terminals, so it allows the
user to log on.
2. File Transfer, Access, and Management (FTAM): An application allows a user to
access files in a remote computer, to retrieve files from a computer and to manage files in
a remote computer. FTAM defines a hierarchical virtual file in terms of file structure, file
attributes and the kind of operations performed on the files and their attributes.
3. Addressing: To obtain communication between client and server, there is a need for
addressing. When a client made a request to the server, the request contains the server
address and its own address. The server response to the client request, the request
contains the destination address, i.e., client address. To achieve this kind of addressing,
DNS is used.
4. Mail Services: An application layer provides Email forwarding and storage.
5. Directory Services: An application contains a distributed database that provides access
for global information about various objects and services.
6. Authentication: It authenticates the sender or receiver's message or both.

5.1.1 E-mail System

E-mail system comprises of the following three components:
1. Mailer
 2. Mail Server
3. Mailbox
Mailer
It is also called mail program, mail application or mail client. It allows us to manage, read
and compose e-mail.
Mail Server
The function of mail server is to receive, store and deliver the email. It is must for mail
servers to be Running all the time because if it crashes or is down, email can be lost.
Mailboxes
Mailbox is generally a folder that contains emails and information about them.

5.1.2 Working of E-mail

Email working follows the client server approach. In this client is the mailer i.e. the mail
application or mail program and server is a device that manages emails.
Following example will take you through the basic steps involved in sending and receiving
emails and will give you a better understanding of working of email system:
 Suppose person A wants to send an email message to person B.
 Person A composes the messages using a mailer program i.e. mail client and then select
Send option.
 The message is routed to Simple Mail Transfer Protocol to person B’s mail server.
 The mail server stores the email message on disk in an area designated for person B.
 The disk space area on mail server is called mail spool.
 Now, suppose person B is running a POP client and knows how to communicate with B’s
mail server.
 It will periodically poll the POP server to check if any new email has arrived for B.As in
this case, person B has sent an email for person B, so email is forwarded over the
network to B’s PC. This is message is now stored on person B’s PC.
The following diagram gives pictorial representation of the steps discussed above:
Eamil Operation:
Creating Email Account
There are various email service provider available such as Gmail, hotmail, ymail, rediff mail etc.
Here we will learn how to create an account using Gmail.
 Open gmail.com and click create an account.
 Now a form will appear. Fill your details here and click Next Step.

 This step allows you to add your picture. If you don’t want to upload now, you can do it
later. Click Next Step.
 Now a welcome window appears. Click Continue to Gmail.
 You will see your Gmail account as shown in the following image:
Key Points:
 Gmail manages the mail into three categories namely Primary, Social and Promotions.
 Compose option is given at the right to compose an email message.
 Inbox, Starred, Sent mail, Drafts options are available on the left pane which allows you
to keep track of your emails.

Composing and Sending Email

Before sending an email, we need to compose a message. When we are composing an email
message, we specify the following things:
Sender’s address in To field
 Cc (if required)
 Bcc (if required)
 Subject of email message
 Text
 Signature
You should specify the correct email address; otherwise it will send an error back to the sender.
Once you have specified all the above parameters, It’s time to send the email. The mailer
program provides a Send button to send email, when you click Send, it is sent to the mail server
and a message mail sent successfully is shown at the above.

Reading Email
Every email program offers you an interface to access email messages. Like in Gmail, emails are
stored under different tabs such as primary, social, and promotion. When you click one of tab, it
displays a list of emails under that tab.
In order to read an email, you just have to click on that email. Once you click a particular email,
it gets opened.
The opened email may have some file attached with it. The attachments are shown at the bottom
of the opened email with an option called download attachment.
Replying Email
After reading an email, you may have to reply that email. To reply an email, click Reply option
shown at the bottom of the opened email.
Once you click on Reply, it will automatically copy the sender’s address in to the To field.
Below the To field, there is a text box where you can type the message.
Once you are done with entering message, click Send button. It’s that easy. Your email is sent.

Forwarding Email
It is also possible to send a copy of the message that you have received along with your own
comments if you want. This can be done using forward button available in mail client software.
The difference between replying and forwarding an email is that when you reply a message to a
person who has send the mail but while forwarding you can send it to anyone.
When you receive a forwarded message, the message is marked with a > character in front of
each line and Subject: field is prefixed with Fw.

Deleting Email
If you don’t want to keep email into your inbox, you can delete it by simply selecting the
message from the message list and clicking delete or pressing the appropriate command.
Some mail clients offers the deleted mails to be stored in a folder called deleted items or trash
from where you can recover a deleted email.

5.1.3 URL and Types of URL

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. Any internet location available on server is called a
web URL, web address or website. Each website or webpage has a unique address called URL.
A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) contains the information, which is as follows:
 The port number on the server, which is optional.
 It contains a protocol that is used to access the resource.
 The location of the server
 A fragment identifier
 In the directory structure of the server, it contains the location of the resource.

For e.g., the website of mywork website has an address or URL called https://www.mywork.org/

type://address/path -> basic structure of url

type: It specifies the type of the server in which the file is located.
address: It specifies the address or location of the internet server.
path: It specifies the location of the file on the internet server.

Types of URL: URL gives the address of files created for webpages or other documents like an
image, pdf for a doc file, etc.

There are two types of URL:

1. Absolute URL
2. Relative URL
Absolute URL: This type of URL contains both the domain name and directory/page path. An
absolute URL gives complete location information. It begins with a protocol like “http://” and
continues, including every detail. An absolute URL typically comes with the following syntax.
protocol://domain/path
For web browsing, absolute URL’s are types in the address bar of a web browser. For
example, if it is related to our project page link of “mywork” website, the URL should be
mentioned as https://www.mywork.org/computer-science-projects/
This gives the complete information about the file location path.
Note: The protocol may be of following types.
http://, https://, ftp://, gopher://, etc.

Relative URL: This type of URL contains the path excluding the domain name. Relative means
“in relation to”, and a relative URL tells a URL location on terms of the current location.
Relative path is used for reference to a given link of a file that exist within the same domain.
Let us assume a web developer setting up a webpage and want to link an image called
“mywork.jpg”.
<img src="mywork.jpg">
It would internally be interpreted like the following.
<img src="./mywork.jpg">
The dot(.) before the “/” in the src attribute is a “special character”. It means the location should
be started from the current directory to find the file location.

5.2.1 What is the process of sending an email? (From sender to receiver)

The following steps show the general process of sending an email:

 The user composes an email using a third-party email client, such as Outlook, and
hits Send.
 The email client connects to the SMTP server.
 The SMTP server identifies and processes the recipient's email address, the body of the
message and additional attachments.
 If the domain name is the same as the sender's, the message is routed directly over POP3
or IMAP. If the domain name is different, the SMTP server communicates with the
domain name system (DNS) to find the recipient's server. The DNS translates the
recipient's email domain name into an Internet Protocol (IP) address.
 The recipient's IP address connects to the SMTP server. Once the IP is identified, the sent
message is routed between unrelated SMTP servers until it arrives at its destination.
 The recipient's SMTP server handles the email. It checks the message and directs it over
to an IMAP or POP3 server. The email is then placed in a mail queue until the recipient
retrieves it.
Protocols supported at various levels
Layer Name Protocols
Layer 7 Application SMTP, HTTP, FTP, POP3, SNMP
Layer 6 Presentation MPEG, ASCH, SSL, TLS
Layer 5 Session NetBIOS, SAP
Layer 4 Transport TCP, UDP
Layer 3 Network IPV5, IPV6, ICMP, IPSEC, ARP, MPLS.
Layer 2 Data Link RAPA, PPP, Frame Relay, ATM, Fiber Cable, etc.
Layer 1 Physical RS232, 100BaseTX, ISDN, 11.

What are the middle layer protocols in the TCP/IP?

1. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
2. Internet Protocol (IP)
3. Domain Name Server (DNS)
What are the upper layer protocols in the TCP/IP?
1. File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
2. Terminal Network (TelNet)
3. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
Name the misc. Protocols of the internet?
1. Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP)
2. Point-to-Protocol (PPP)
3. Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN)

Physical Network Layer

The physical network layer specifies the characteristics of the hardware to be used for
the network. For example, it specifies the physical characteristics of the
communications media. The physical layer of TCP/IP describes hardware standards
such as IEEE 802.3, the specification for Ethernet network media, and RS-232, the
specification for standard pin connectors.

Data-Link Layer

The data-link layer identifies the network protocol type of the packet, in this case
TCP/IP. It also provides error control and "framing." Examples of data-link layer
protocols are Ethernet IEEE 802.2 framing and Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) framing.

Internet Layer

This layer, also known as the network layer, accepts and delivers packets for the
network. It includes the powerful Internet protocol (IP), the Address Resolution
Protocol (ARP) protocol, and the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) protocol.

IP Protocol

The IP protocol and its associated routing protocols are possibly the most significant
of the entire TCP/IP suite. IP is responsible for:

 IP addressing - The IP addressing conventions are part of the IP protocol.

 Host-to-host communications - IP determines the path a packet must take,

based on the receiving host's IP address.

 Packet formatting - IP assembles packets into units known as IP datagrams.

 Fragmentation - If a packet is too large for transmission over the network

media, IP on the sending host breaks the packet into smaller fragments. IP on
the receiving host then reconstructs the fragments into the original packet.

Previous releases of the Solaris operating environment implemented version 4 of the

Internet Protocol, which is written IPv4. However, because of the rapid growth of the
Internet, it was necessary to create a new Internet Protocol with improved capabilities,
such as increased address space. This new version, known as version 6, is written
IPv6. The Solaris operating environment supports both versions, which are described
in this book. To avoid confusion when addressing the Internet Protocol, the following
convention is used:
  When the term IP is used in a description, the description applies to both IPv4
and IPv6.
 When the term IPv4 is used in a description, the description applies only to
IPv4.
 When the term IPv6 is used in a description, the description applies only to
IPv6.

ARP Protocol

The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) conceptually exists between the data link and
Internet layers. ARP assists IP in directing datagrams to the appropriate receiving host
by mapping Ethernet addresses (48 bits long) to known IP addresses (32 bits long).

ICMP Protocol

Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is the protocol responsible for detecting
network error conditions and reporting on them. ICMP reports on:

 Dropped packets (when packets are arriving too fast to be processed)

 Connectivity failure (when a destination host can't be reached)
 Redirection (which tells a sending host to use another router)

The "ping Command" contains more information on the operating system commands
that use ICMP for error detection.

Transport Layer

The TCP/IP transport layer protocols ensure that packets arrive in sequence and
without error, by swapping acknowledgments of data reception, and retransmitting
lost packets. This type of communication is known as "end-to-end." Transport layer
protocols at this level are Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram
Protocol (UDP).

TCP Protocol

TCP enables applications to communicate with each other as though connected by a

physical circuit. TCP sends data in a form that appears to be transmitted in a
character-by-character fashion, rather than as discreet packets. This transmission
consists of a starting point, which opens the connection, the entire transmission in
byte order, and an ending point, which closes the connection.
TCP attaches a header onto the transmitted data. This header contains a large number
of parameters that help processes on the sending machine connect to peer processes
on the receiving machine.

TCP confirms that a packet has reached its destination by establishing an end-to-end
connection between sending and receiving hosts. TCP is therefore considered a
"reliable, connection-oriented" protocol.

UDP Protocol

UDP, the other transport layer protocol, provides datagram delivery service. It does
not provide any means of verifying that connection was ever achieved between
receiving and sending hosts. Because UDP eliminates the processes of establishing
and verifying connections, applications that send small amounts of data use it rather
than TCP.

Application Layer

The application layer defines standard Internet services and network applications that
anyone can use. These services work with the transport layer to send and receive data.
There are many applications layer protocols, some of which you probably already use.
Some of the protocols include:

 Standard TCP/IP services such as the ftp, tftp, and telnet commands
 UNIX "r" commands, such as rlogin and rsh
 Name services, such as NIS+ and Domain Name System (DNS)
 File services, such as the NFS service
 Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), which enables network
management
 RIP and RDISC routing protocols

Standard TCP/IP Services

 FTP and Anonymous FTP - The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) transfers files
to and from a remote network. The protocol includes the ftp command (local
machine) and the in.ftpd daemon (remote machine). FTP enables a user to
specify the name of the remote host and file transfer command options on the
local host's command line. The in.ftpd daemon on the remote host then
handles the requests from the local host. Unlike rcp, ftp works even when the
remote computer does not run a UNIX-based operating system. A user must log
in to the remote computer to make an ftp connection unless it has been set up
to allow anonymous FTP.
 You can now obtain a wealth of materials from anonymous FTP
servers connected to the Internet. These servers are set up by universities and
other institutions to make certain software, research papers, and other
information available to the public domain. When you log in to this type of
server, you use the login name anonymous, hence the term "anonymous FTP
servers."

 Telnet - The Telnet protocol enables terminals and terminal-oriented processes

to communicate on a network running TCP/IP. It is implemented as the
program telnet (on local machines) and the daemon in.telnet (on remote
machines). Telnet provides a user interface through which two hosts can
communicate on a character-by-character or line-by-line basis. The application
includes a set of commands that are fully documented in the telnet(1) man
page.

 TFTP - The trivial file transfer protocol (tftp) provides functions similar
to ftp, but it does not establish ftp's interactive connection. As a result, users
cannot list the contents of a directory or change directories. This means that a
user must know the full name of the file to be copied. The tftp(1) man page
describes the tftp command set.

UNIX "r" Commands

The UNIX "r" commands enable users to issue commands on their local machines that
are actually carried out on the remote host that they specify. These commands include

 rcp
 rlogin
 rsh

Name Services

Two name services are available from the Solaris implementation of TCP/IP: NIS+
and DNS.

 NIS+ - NIS+ provides centralized control over network administration services,

such as mapping host names to IP and Ethernet addresses, verifying passwords,
and so on. See Solaris Naming Administration Guide for complete details.

 Domain Name System - The Domain Name System (DNS) provides host
names to the IP address service. It also serves as a database for mail
 administration. For a complete description of this service, see Solaris Naming
Administration Guide. See also the in.named(1M) man page.

File Services

The NFS application layer protocol provides file services for the Solaris operating
environment.

Network Administration

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) enables you to view the layout of
your network, view status of key machines, and obtain complex network statistics
from graphical user interface based software. Many companies offer network
management packages that implement SNMP; SunNet ManagerTM software is an
example.

Routing Protocols

The Routing Information Protocol (RIP) and the Router Discovery Protocol (RDISC)
are two routing protocols for TCP/IP networks.
Search Engine:
A search engine is a service that allows Internet users to search for content via the World Wide
Web (WWW). Search Engine refers to a huge database of internet resources such as web pages,
newsgroups, programs, images etc. It helps to locate information on World Wide Web.
A user enters keywords or key phrases into a search engine and receives a list of Web content
results in the form of websites, images, videos or other online data that semantically match with
the search query.

Search Engine Components:

Generally there are three basic components of a search engine as listed below:
1. Web Crawler
2. Database
3. Search Interfaces
4. Ranking algorithm
Web crawler
Crawling is the first stage in which a search engine uses web crawlers to find, visit, and
download the web pages on the WWW (World Wide Web). Crawling is performed by software
robots, known as "spiders" or "crawlers." So, Web Crawler is also known as a search engine
bot, web robot, or web spider. These robots are used to review the website content. In short, it
is a software component that traverses the web to gather information.
Database
All the information on the web is stored in database. It consists of huge web resources.
Search Interfaces
This component is an interface between user and the database. It helps the user to search
through the database.
Ranking Algorithms
The ranking is the last stage of the search engine. It is used to provide a piece of content
that will be the best answer based on the user's query. It displays the best content at the top rank
of the website. The ranking algorithm is used by Google to rank web pages according to the
Google search algorithm.
There are the following ranking features that affect the search results -
 Location and frequency
 Link Analysis
 Click through measurement

How do search engines work

Web crawler, database and the search interface are the major component of a search engine that
actually makes search engine to work. Search engines make use of Boolean expression AND,
OR, NOT to restrict and widen the results of a search.

Following are the steps that are performed by the search engine:
 The search engine looks for the keyword in the index for predefined database instead of
going directly to the web to search for the keyword. Indexing is an online library of
websites, which is used to sort, store, and organize the content that we found during the
crawling. Once a page is indexed, it appears as a result of the most valuable and most
relevant query.
  It then uses software to search for the information in the database. This software
component is known as web crawler.
 Once web crawler finds the pages, the search engine then shows the relevant web pages
as a result. These retrieved web pages generally include title of page, size of text portion,
first several sentences etc.
 These search criteria may vary from one search engine to the other. The retrieved
information is ranked according to various factors such as frequency of keywords,
relevancy of information, links etc.
 User can click on any of the search results to open it.

Search Engine Processing

1. Indexing Process
Indexing is the process of building a structure that enables searching.
Indexing process comprises of the following three tasks:
 Text acquisition
 Text transformation
 Index creation
a. Text acquisition
It identifies and stores documents for indexing.
b. Text Transformation
It transforms document into index terms or features.
c. Index Creation
It takes index terms created by text transformations and create data structures to support fast
searching.
 2. Query Process
The query is the process of producing the list of documents based on a user's search
query.
Query process comprises of the following three tasks:
 User interaction
 Ranking
 Evaluation
a. User interaction
User interaction provides an interface between the users who search the content and the search
engine. It supports creation and refinement of user query and displays the results.
b. Ranking
It uses query data from the user interaction and indexes to create ranked list of documents (data
based on the retrieval model).
c. Evaluation
It monitors and measures the effectiveness and efficiency. It is done offline.The evaluation result
helps us to improve the ranking of the search engine.
Examples
Following are the several search engines available today:
Search Description
Engine

Google It was originally called BackRub. It is the

most popular search engine globally.

Bing It was launched in 2009 by Microsoft. It is

the latest web-based search engine that also
delivers Yahoo’s results.

Ask It was launched in 1996 and was originally

known as Ask Jeeves. It includes support for
match, dictionary, and conversation
question.

AltaVista It was launched by Digital Equipment

Corporation in 1995. Since 2003, it is
powered by Yahoo technology.

AOL.Search It is powered by Google.

LYCOS It is top 5 internet portal and 13th largest

online property according to Media Matrix.

Alexa It is subsidiary of Amazon and used for

providing website traffic information.

Advantages:
1. Time-Saving
Search engine helps us to save time by the following two ways -
 Eliminate the need to find information manually.
 Perform search operations at a very high speed.

2. Variety of information
The search engine offers various variety of resources to obtain relevant and valuable information
from the Internet. By using a search engine, we can get information in various fields such as
education, entertainment, games, etc. The information which we get from the search engine is in
the form of blogs, pdf, ppt, text, images, videos, and audios.

3. Precision
All search engines have the ability to provide more precise results.

4. Free Access
Mostly search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo allow end-users to search their content
for free. In search engines, there is no restriction related to a number of searches, so all end users
(Students, Job seekers, IT employees, and others) spend a lot of time to search valuable content
to fulfill their requirements.

5. Advanced Search
Search engines allow us to use advanced search options to get relevant, valuable, and informative
results. Advanced search results make our searches more flexible as well as sophisticated. For
example, when you want to search for a specific site, type "site:" without quotes followed by the
site's web address.
 Suppose we want to search for some networking notes on xyz site then type "networking
site:www.xyz.com" to get the advanced result quickly.
 To search about education institution sites (colleges and universities) for B.Tech in
computer science engineering, then use "computer science engineering site:.edu." to get
the advanced result.

6. Relevance
Search engines allow us to search for relevant content based on a particular keyword. For
example, a site "xyz" scores a higher search for the term "network tutorial" this is because a
search engine sorts its result pages by the relevance of the content; that's why we can see the
highest-scoring results at the top of SERP.

Disadvantages of Search Engine

There are the following disadvantages of Search Engines -
1. Sometimes the search engine takes too much time to display relevant, valuable, and
informative content.
2. Search engines, especially Google, frequently update their algorithm, and it is very
difficult to find the algorithm in which Google runs.
3. It makes end-users effortless as they all time use search engines to solve their small
queries also.

Ref:
https://www.javatpoint.com/how-to-backup-iphone-to-computer
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/internet_technologies/e_mail_working.htm
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/types-of-url/
https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/mail-server-mail-transfer-transport-agent-MTA-
mail-router-Internet-mailer
https://www.javatpoint.com/search-
engines#:~:text=A%20search%20engine%20is%20an,%2Dusers%20(internet%20user)
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/internet_technologies/search_engines.htm
URL

A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a unique identifier used to locate a resource on the
Internet. It is also referred to as a web address. URLs consist of multiple parts -- including a
protocol and domain name -- that tell a web browser how and where to retrieve a resource.

End users use URLs by typing them directly into the address bar of a browser or by clicking a
hyperlink found on a webpage, bookmark list, in an email or from another application

How is a URL structured?

The URL contains the name of the protocol needed to access a resource, as well as a resource
name. The first part of a URL identifies what protocol to use as the primary access medium. The
second part identifies the IP address or domain name -- and possibly subdomain -- where the
resource is located.

URL protocols include HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and HTTPS (HTTP Secure) for web
resources, mail to for email addresses, FTP for files on a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server, and
telnet for a session to access remote computers. Most URL protocols are followed by a colon and
two forward slashes; "mail to" is followed only by a colon.

Optionally, after the domain, a URL can also specify:

a path to a specific page or file within a domain;

a network port to use to make the connection;

a specific reference point within a file, such as a named anchor in an HTML file; and

a query or search parameters used -- commonly found in URLs for search results.

Importance of a URL design

URLs can only be sent over the Internet using the ASCII character-set. Because URLs often
contain non-ASCII characters, the URL must be converted into a valid ASCII format. URL
encoding replaces unsafe ASCII characters with a "%" followed by two hexadecimal digits.
URLs cannot contain spaces.

URL examples

When designing URLs, there are different theories about how to make the syntax most usable for
readers and archivists. For example, in the URL's path, dates, authors, and topics can be included
in a section referred to as the "slug." Consider, for example, the URL for this definition:

https://www.techtarget.com/searchnetworking/definition/URL
Look past the protocol (identified as HTTPS) and the permalink (www.techtarget.com) and we
see the file path includes two paths (searchnetworking and definition) and the title of the
definition (URL).

Additionally, some URL designers choose to put the date of the post, typically, as
(YYYY/MM/DD).

Components of a URL
A typical website has at least 3 parts in its URL like www.google.com but some complex URLs
might also have 8 to 9 parts namely scheme, subdomain, domain name, top-level domain, port
number, path, query, parameters, and fragment.

Components of a URL
1. Scheme :
https://
The protocol or scheme part of the URL and indicates the set of rules that will decide the
transmission and exchange of data. HTTPS which stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
Secure tells the browser to display the page in Hyper Text (HTML) format as well as encrypt
any information that the user enters in the page. Other protocols include the FTP or File Transfer
Protocol which is used for transferring files between client and server, SMTP or Single Mail
Transfer Protocol which is used for sending emails.
2. Subdomain :
https://www.
The subdomain is used to separate different sections of the website as it specifies the type of
resource to be delivered to the client. Here the subdomain used ‘www’ is a general symbol for any
resource on the web. Subdomains like ‘blog’ direct to a blog page, ‘audio’ indicates the resource
type as audio.
3. Domain Name :
https://www.example.
Domain name specifies the organization or entity that the URL belongs to. Like
in www.facebook.com the domain name ‘facebook’ indicates the organization that owns the site.
4. Top-level Domain :
https://www.example.co.uk
The TLD (top-level domain) indicates the type of organization the website is registered to.
Like the .com in www.facebook.com indicates a commercial entity. Similarly, .org indicates
organization, .co.uk a commercial entity in the UK.
5. Port Number :
https://www.example.co.uk:443
A port number specifies the type of service that is requested by the client since servers often
deliver multiple services. Some default port numbers include 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS
servers.
6. Path :
https://www.example.co.uk:443/blog/article/search
Path specifies the exact location of the web page, file, or any resource that the user wants
access to. Like here the path indicates a specific article in the blog webpage.
7. Query String Separator :
https://www.example.co.uk:443/blog/article/search?
The query string which contains specific parameters of the search is preceded by a question
mark (?). The question mark tells the browser that a specific query is being performed.
8. Query String :
https://www.example.co.uk:443/blog/article/search?docid=720&hl=en
The query string specifies the parameters of the data that is being queried from a website’s
database. Each query string is made up of a parameter and a value joined by the equals (=)
sign. In case of multiple parameters, query strings are joined using the ampersand (&) sign. The
parameter can be a number, string, encrypted value, or any other form of data on the database.
9. Fragment :
https://www.example.co.uk:443/blog/article/search?docid=720&hl=en#dayo
ne
The fragment identifier of a URL is optional, usually appears at the end, and begins with a hash
(#). It indicates a specific location within a page such as the ‘id’ or ‘name’ attribute for an
HTML element.
You might be surprised that though URLs seem to be trivial in nature, what your URL looks like is
actually a significant factor in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Feel free to check out more on
URLs from here:
 https://developer.mozilla.org/enUS/docs/Learn/Common_questions/What_is_a_URL
 https://www.hostgator.com/blog/best-url-structure-seo/
 Source: https://amberwilson.co.uk/blog/urls/

Other examples of parts of a URL can include:

The URL mailto:president@whitehouse.gov initiates a new email addressed to the mailbox

president in the domain whitehouse.gov.

The URL ftp://www.companyname.com/whitepapers/widgets.ps specifies the use of the FTP

protocol to download a file.

HTTP vs. HTTPs

Both HTTP and HTTPS are used to retrieve data from a web server to view content in a browser.
The difference between them is that HTTPS uses a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate to
encrypt the connection between the end user and the server.

HTTPS is vital to protecting sensitive information, such as passwords, credit card numbers and
identity data, from unauthorized access.

HTTPS uses TCP/IP port number 443 by default, whereas HTTP uses port 80.

URL vs. URI

A URL is the most common type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). URIs are strings of
characters used to identify a resource over a network. URLs are essential to navigating the
internet.

URL shorteners

URL shortening is a technique in which an URL may be made substantially shorter in length and
still direct to the required page. A shortener achieves this using a redirect on a domain name that
is short.

There are many URL shortener services available. While many are free, those that offer
capabilities such as Web analytics, charge a fee. Companies that offer URL shorteners include
Rebrandly, Bitly, Ow.ly, clicky.me and Budurl.com.

Some Web site hosts, such as GoDaddy.com, offer URL shorteners. Other service providers,
including search engines, have begun turning away from URL shorteners because they are often
subject to abuse by spammers, who hide malware inside shortened URLs.