Website lookup

A website and the domain names accompanying them are the most common usage of the internet. It is much easier to understand than most other addressing options. To create a website, you will need to create or rent a web server listening at least to one IP address. Then you will have to register a domain name and create a DNS-zone for it to make the translation from an easy to remember domain name to a harder to remember IP address. Most commonly is adding A records for www and the so-called blank record, which is used when you enter the website URL in your browser without the prefix www.

With regard to the IP address and domain name combination, there are a few common options used which we want to uncover. First, for the smallest websites there usually exists a one-to-many relationship, meaning that they can use a server with a shared IP address. Therefor it is possible to see an IP with more than one website running from it, so when you try to get it by entering the IP address in your web browser, you will probably get another website from that same server, as the webserver will give you the first one defined in its configuration.
Larger websites tend to have a one-to-one relation in regard to the IP addresses. The reason is simple. They don’t want to share their resources with other websites, due to the fact they need good performance as is required to become a top ranking website these days.
The last configuration option, which is common in our research, is the many-to-one configuration. Only the top websites will configure their server-setup like this, and it makes sense. Because of the fact they are processing vast amounts of visitors, they can’t run on only one webserver anymore. They distribute a single address over multiple servers.

Because there is so much cross-referencing going on when creating a website, it gives our website the chance to see how everything is connected and make a blueprint of it to help people discover how the technical side of things really work. We combine this with our background information on the address itself and can create a full overview of it and can point you into a direction on who to talk to when you have a complaint.

The internet is more and more becoming a very complex place where people can roam free and do whatever they like, without consequences. At least, they think. We, however, try to keep things transparent as much as we can.