Uniform Resource Locators

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a name for a resource on the Internet.

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) has this general syntax:

scheme:[//host.domain[:port][/path][/filename]][newsgroup][email address]

where scheme is a protocol used in network communication. Here are the popular protocols:

Protocol	Explanation
file	file on your local system, or a file on an anonymous FTP server
ftp	a file on an anonymous FTP server
http	a resource on a World Wide Web server
gopher	a resource on a Gopher server
WAIS	a resource on a WAIS server
news	an Usenet newsgroup
telnet	a connection to a telnet-based service
mailto	a link for sending electronic mail

Here's some examples:

URL	Example
http://www.december.com/net/audio.html	Shows the URL to a Web site, www.december.com, to the the resource in the directory net, file audio.html
ftp://ftp.merit.edu/	Links to an FTP site, ftp.merit.edu, to its top-level directory.
mailto:john@december.com	Links you to a session in your Web browser set up for sending electronic mail to john@december.com
news:alt.fan.letterman	Links to a Usenet newsgroup, alt.fan.letterman

You can see some more URL types demonstrated.