Trivial Question about IRS.gov

I previously asked about topics in Notice 1400. I had gone to

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to look at what they mentioned. Today, in reading closely, I saw that they had written to go to IRS.gov. My browsers say that they can not reach that site.
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works fine. I wonder why they write IRS.gov, omitting the www. In most sites I visit the www is really optional, and the different addresses lead to the same place.

Reply to
Larry Israel
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It's the same website. It's just laziness on the part of whoever programs the site

Reply to
Stuart A. Bronstein

look at what they mentioned.  Today, in reading closely, I

This is because the DNS has a mapping for

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but not irs.gov, or they don't have a rule that if suburl is not found then try www.suburl. See the following websitet for an explanation

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On the other hand, whitehouse.gov, house.gov, federalreserve.gov work fine, so the issue is only specific to irs.

I'll email the IRS helpdesk.

Reply to
removeps-groups

look at what they mentioned.  Today, in reading closely, I

My guess: The person who wrote Notice 1400 foolishly assumed that irs.gov is like most sites where the www is optional for the visitor. It may even be optional inside the IRS intranet so that author's assumption would appear valid from his/her desktop.

Reply to
Bill Brown

. I wonder why they write

Or name a town with out naming the state, (i.e. Eureka )

Or write a book without an index or bibliography.

Or write an instruction like " turn the knob slowly but be careful to turn it only in the correct direction" The end.

The writer knows the answer, but is unable to fathom that someone else doesn't have the part they leave out at their fingertips...

It''s better to give too much information than not enough

-----if you expect someone to act on it.

Andy in Eureka, Texas

Reply to
AndyS

------------------------------------- And it still doesn't so they didn't fix it. In DNS it would look like this

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000.111.000 (an ip address)

irs.gov

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The "www" stands for a directory (folder) on the server's real or virtual drive. irs.gov stands for an ip address. If you just go to the ip address, you get nothing. You have to go the correct folder to get the file for the home page (a default that loads automatically).

So for you to get a file off a web server, you need a url like this

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It could be
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- or wordafter the// - but a directory name needs to be there. If you leave outthe directory name, a referral needs to be in the DNS record so thecomputers know that irs.gov stands for
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That's what ismissing in this case, and why irs.gov won't take you to
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.
Reply to
Mikef10

That's not how it works. Every DNS name corresponds to a network IP address, DNS has no concept of a "folder". What the IP address corresponds to at the server level is outside the scope of DNS.

This is off-topic for taxes, but I didn't want to leave this uncorrected.

See

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for further information.

-Mark Bole

Reply to
Mark Bole

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