www2.

I was just wondering what is the difference between sites that use www2. and sites that use www. prefixes - warner brothers has a www2 website: http://www2.warnerbros.com/main/homepage/homepage.html. and there are many more: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B2GGGL_enGB177&q=www2

Is the www2. just a different prefix to allow more users to use the internet i.e one user could have a web address www.mysite.com and one user could have another site called www2.mysite.com, with both websites being completely different to one and another. Or does the www2. prefix indicate different web standards?

Can anyone help me with my query? Maybe it means nothing.

Thanks.

 

Nope, no difference. Don't forget that even www is just a subdomain.

 

Most likely this is with websites that have a large amount of traffic.
Probably www2 is another hosting server were the same website is located, when one server is overloaded is swiches to another server.

See below, they both have a different IP, meaning a different hosting server.

www2.warnerbros.com [64.236.92.10]
www.warnerbros.com[64.12.46.148]

 

Some companies use different routes (different IP classes) for some countries, geo targetting. Otherwise, there are no special tricks in using "www2" and has no special meaning.

 

thanks for everyones replies they have been very useful and have solved just a query i had. thanks.