Seems interesting when we deeply think about how a website came in front of us when we type a text on our browser input 🤔. We even wonder what is this “http“, “www“, “.com“ can’t we get our website without it? What if I say, yes you can access a website without typing any of these. So, lets try to understand what’s happening behind the scenes of a browser. Let’s start with what is a browser?

What is a browser ?

Everyone had heard the term “Browser”. Basically, it is an application often pre-installed in your phone like Chrome, Safari or Firefox. these all are browsers which provides us a way to interact with the information which is on “World Wide Web” (www) or internet. Browsers are not simple like this definition, there are a lot of complex things which are happening down their. Firstly, lets breakdown the URL.

What is an URL?

URL stands for Universal Resource Locator. These google.com, facebook.com these all are a URL. So, let’s break down the these URLs some of you heard about the domain name also but these two are different from each other.

So, as you seen in this diagram URL is an umbrella under which all these protocols, subdomain, domain and TLDs exists.

Lets breakdown these terms:

Protocols

There a lot of computers around us but when communication takes place between computers there is a need of a bridge which help us to unite communication process so, for that there are network protocols. Protocols are the set up rules which specifies how to format and process a data.

Subdomain

Subdomain are the prefix which we write before the domain name like www.example.com or shop.example.com. They are used to create separate sections of a website. For example:- A creator with a website, creator.com, can use shop.creator.com as a subdomain to sell merchandise separately from their main site.

Domain Name

Websites are stored in a server which have there own IP address by which we can access them. But for humans it is not easy to remember these IP addresses. So, we have domain names which points towards a specific IP address. Further breaking down the domain name:

• Top-Level Domain (TLD): The end part of a website address, like .com for businesses or .in for India.

• Second-Level Domain (SLD): The main name of the website, like google in google.com or hashnode in hashnode.com.

So, we have learnt enough about URLs show lets know that how a we actually access a websites? Previously, we learned that every website is stored on a server, and domain names point to the IP address of the server where the website is hosted.

Browser converts URLs to an IP address. So, how a browser actually converts a domain names to an IP address 🤔?

Conversion of an URL into IP Address

To convert an valid URL to an IP address browser follows a process named as DNS Resolution.

DNS Resolution

The process of converting URLs into the IP addresses called DNS Resolution.

We perform following steps during DNS Resolution:

1. Entering the URL: Users inputs a URL into the browser.

2. Finding the IP Address: Browser sends the URL to DNS servers and then DNS servers lookup the IP address of the following URL with its domain name.

3. Getting the Response: DNS server returns the IP address to the browser.

4. Connecting to the Web Server: The browsers have the power to connect with the servers directly using IP addresses. And after connection browser loads the website and displays you.

   

That’s all we need to access a website now the question arises can we get a website without URL?

Yes we have to get the IP address of the website and then we can access it without even typing the URL

I have the IP address of the Google’s server in which it is hosted lets try it:

We’ve got our response 😅

You can also try it here’s the IP Address:

142.250.193.14

We don’t need to write these URLs we can directly access a website using IP addresses. But, as a human it is not possible for us to remember these IP Addresses, URLs were created for convenience. If you’re a super human you can also remember these IP’s 😂.