Internet Addressing
In order to route a message across the Internet, each connected device must have a unique address that distinguishes it from all the other nodes.
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URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
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URL is a standard for specifying the location of an object on the Internet. Below are some example URLs:
http://people.aero.und.edu/~userid/http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ip&btnG=Searchftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors/gifkit.zipmailto:dbh@doc.ic.ac.uktelnet://dra.com
The part before the first colon specifies the access scheme or protocol. For HTTP, two slashes after the colon introduce a hostname. The next part is a pathname which is usually related to the pathname of a file on the server. The last (optional) part of the URL may be a query string preceded by ‘?’.
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URI (Universal Resource Identifier)
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URI is a formatted string that serves as an identifier for a resource on the Internet.
URIs that specify a common Internet protocol such as HTTP or FTP are also called URLs.
URI is a superset of URL.
For the sake of simplicity, you may treat URI and URL the same at this moment.
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ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)
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The non-profit corporation that was formed to assume responsibility for IP address allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root server system management functions
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ISP (Internet Service Provider)
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A company that provides an Internet connection such as Midcontinent Communications