Question about web address format

In my previous post "A good site for beginners" I had mentioned about a website called www.learntcpip.com.

If you notice carefully you can see I have put a dot (full stop) at the end, thanks VicE$DoS$ for finding that. I accept that was a mistake from my part, and beacuse of that the link was not opening the correct website.

Now to my question, some time back while I was reading about DNS, the book explained that the correct way of typing the web address is in the following heirarchical format

webserver.domainname.topdomain.

If you notice here there is a dot "." at the end and that is explained as the root server, since that is at the top of the heirarchy. The book also says that these days it is not required to put a dot "." at the end of the address but it should not hurt anything.

So my question is why some (almost all) address eg: www.msn.com. (notice "." at the end) opens the correct site while some address eg: www.msn.co.uk. does not open the site or open the wrong website ( www.learntcpip.com. )

hope I haven;t confused you all.

Thanks

Hmmmm.I don't have my DNS book with me but I know that when I set up DNS / BIND and I created the database for my domains, I had to put the (.) at the end of the domains and host names. If I did not do so , I would get errors. I am not sure about using the (.) at the end of an address like www.domain.com or system.domain.com when using a web browser or making a call to the host with the (.) at the end.

I used both www.msn.com. and www.msn.com and found this difference:

Using www.msn.com. returns the following in my address bar and brings up the page
http://www.msn.com./?gcs=1

Using www.msn.com returns the following in my address bar and brings up the same page
http://www.msn.com

What is the significance of /?gcs=1

I'll do a little digging tonight in my DNS books and see what I can find out.

I noticed that difference Infiltrator, one thing I don't understand is why different sites respond different
www.msn.co.uk. does changes in the address bar but is not displaying the web content.

Do you think that is part of DNS server configuration or soething to do with the root server itself?

any thoughts about this?

I think the Internet DNS and Private DNS (Use in Microsoft 2000 and over) are not the same. Don't forget you can name your Windows 2000 domain any name but a Internet domain have to finished with .com or .net or whatever exist :) The .com and .net must do the jobs of . of Windows 2000. I'm not totally sure what I wrote but I think it's accurate or could send someone in the right direction on google :)