Web addresses are like unique identifiers we use to locate and find specific website, document or file on the internet. But why are they in English?

Long before the advent of web addresses, we connect computers together by using the unique identifier of the machine that are interacting together, the IP address. The IP addresses are usually assigned to computers not people and they consist of strings of characters.

After some time when the Web started growing rapidly, it became so hard to remember all the unique identifier of all computers you want to connect to, then scientists at the University of Wisconsin developed what we called the Domain Names System (DNS) to map the hard-to-remember IP addresses to the domain names that could easily be remembered like smartgeek.com.ng.



So therefore, every time you use a domain name, a DNS must translate it into the corresponding IP address. For example, the domain name smartgeek.com.ng might translate to 193.111.232.4.

So that means you don’t need to cram any IP address to use the Web efficiently, imagine we still use IP addresses to access the web and you want to visit smartgeek.com.ng which translates to 193.111.232.4(it doesn’t) then you swap it with another website of IP address 193.111.232.3 and it takes you to your high school website because we share similar IP addresses.



Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 and by 1992 around 2 millions computers where connected to the internet. There was an urgent need to fix the addressing system of the internet, the internet was growing massively already. Imagine you trying to visit your Great-Grandmother in China without an address.

Then, in 1994, the International Engineering Task Force (IETF) which was mostly made up of the US government representatives introduced a solution, a protocol called the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for the web.



To make Web addresses easier for us to remember, the IETF restricted URLs to few UPPERCASE and lowercase characters, namely the letters of the English alphabet and the digits 0 through 9 and some other few symbols.

These characters were taken from the US-ASCII character set which was developed in the United States and published in 1963. So the short answer is that English-speaking Americans where at the center of the development of the Web and protocols for the web addresses were made according to their language.

It all worked out fine for countries that speak English, but as of 2009, more than half of the 1.6 billion Internet users worldwide spoke a language with a character set other than the English (or Latin) alphabet

Users in places like Egypt who don’t speak English have to access the web through the language they understand which has to use a character set entirely different from the ASCII character set developed by the English. The difference becomes so obvious for everyone to see when you visit a site from a country like Egypt where the site content is entirely in Arabic except for the web address.(see el-balad.com)



After some time it became very obvious that the ICANN, the U.S.-based nonprofit organization that regulates domain names would have to spread the power seat. In 2009 it introduced the International Domain Names or IDNs which makes it possible to have web addresses in languages apart for English like the ones listed in the image below.



This amazing article was first published on SmartGeekNG>>>http://smartgeek.com.ng/2016/10/17/ever-wondered-web-addresses-english/

cool

cooll

colll

Quite informative.

Thanks OP.

Thank you OP

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Interesting and enlightening..

I saw a picture that States: There's no place like 127.0.0.1 What does this mean?

Too lazy to read this

Ok

I see you mean that web addresses only incorporate english alphabets. I initially thought you are talking about english words. Was going to ask what about konga.com sefan.ru and the likes.
Its a nice piece

Thanks

Nice post. Highly informative.

Summary please

Off to work

*The Other Room*
By www.afrilaugh.com
In the other room Hardened men become beggars The queen becomes the king to The king, just a beggarly page
In the other room We cry for joy Beg to be injured For there, we enjoy pain
In the other room We beg to suck milkless breasts Accept every proposal And promise any thing
In the other room Fate of nations are decided Destinies of men are fixed Death warrants are signed
The other room What a room! "
-

*The Other Room*
By www.afrilaugh.com
In the other room Hardened men become beggars The queen becomes the king to The king, just a beggarly page
In the other room We cry for joy Beg to be injured For there, we enjoy pain
In the other room We beg to suck milkless breasts Accept every proposal And promise any thing
In the other room Fate of nations are decided Destinies of men are fixed Death warrants are signed
The other room What a room! "
-

pxjosh:
Interesting and enlightening..

I saw a picture that States: There's no place like 127.0.0.1 What does this mean?

It means "Home"

It mean There's no place like Home.

127.0.0.1 is home to the computer.

pxjosh:
Interesting and
enlightening..

I saw a picture that States: There's no place like 127.0.0.1 What does this mean?

.

pxjosh:
Interesting and enlightening..

I saw a picture that States: There's no place like 127.0.0.1 What does this mean?

That was a proxy used for free browsing back then. Hahahahahahaha.

OK

naijacarz:

It mean There's no place like Home.

127.0.0.1 is home to the computer.

Okay thanks

pxjosh:
Interesting and enlightening..

I saw a picture that States: There's no place like 127.0.0.1 What does this mean?

U no sabi follow backyard enter the Internet

The world is changing very fast. In less than 20 years from now, there'll be a different story.

I thought the internet was invented by a Nigerian named philip in 1987.

.

ZinoFego:
Quite informative.
Thanks OP.

Yes ooooo

iriferi:

It means "Home"

I don't understand. Enlighten me.

Sibrah:
I thought the internet was invented by a Nigerian in 1987.

Yes

It was discovered/invented by Sibrah

No, I have never wondered, never had any reason to.