Doc Edward Morbius ⭕<p><span class="h-card"><a href="https://queer.party/@n8chz" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>n8chz</span></a></span> If I'm understanding you correctly, your telephone number <em>is</em> a "some character string", though composed (usually, not always) of numbers.</p><p>URLs evolved from domain names plus a local path component <em>and</em> additional arguments or values. The domain-name system mapped logical network locations (IP addresses) to mnemonic identifiers, and provided routing through them. I remember using bang-path notation to route email, briefly, in the 1980s, prior to this being fully hammered out.</p><p>(Bang paths specified the routing instructions for email between two points, something that's now handled automatically.)</p><p>Note that <em>DNS</em> and <em>host names</em> are <em>mappings to</em> but also <em>independent of</em> the underlying network topology. I can have, say, "example.com" as a domain, but hosts "local.example.com" and "remote.example.com" be located at two distinct networks, with no underlying logical network location. It's also possible to specify "service addresses" such as "mail.example.com" and "ftp.example.com" which refer to specific protocols (email and FTP respectively, "WWW" is another of these though it's largely been dropped). Or subdomains, so that host.lon.example.com and host.nyc.example.com might correspond to sub-networks in London and New York, where "lon.example.com" and "nyc.example.com" are <em>subdomains</em>.</p><p>And there's a whole lot of other detail.</p><p>When DNS first started there were literally a few hundred, maybe a few thousand, internet <em>hosts</em> let alone <em>domains</em>, and the directory was printed, with the system operator's names and phone numbers in it <em>twice</em> (forward and reverse lookup), updated and distributed regularly.</p><p>There are now <em>billions</em> of hosts (devices), ranging from supercomputers to electronic doorbells and drones, and at the very least <em>millions</em> of domains. Management is ... more complicated than it once was.</p><p>Sorting out what <em>namespaces</em> should map to what <em>address schemes</em> is complex, and as anyone who's attempted ontologies and rational organisational schemes, there's no one solution, and correspondence of <em>use</em> to <em>design intent</em> tends to rapidly diverge over time.</p><p>It's complicated.</p><p><span class="h-card"><a href="https://omfg.town/@dansinker" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>dansinker</span></a></span> </p><p><a href="https://toot.cat/tags/DNS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DNS</span></a> <a href="https://toot.cat/tags/ItsNotDNS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ItsNotDNS</span></a> <a href="https://toot.cat/tags/ThereIsNoWayItsDNS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ThereIsNoWayItsDNS</span></a> <a href="https://toot.cat/tags/ItWasDNS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ItWasDNS</span></a> <a href="https://toot.cat/tags/ItsComplicated" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ItsComplicated</span></a> <a href="https://toot.cat/tags/HistoryOfTheInternet" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>HistoryOfTheInternet</span></a></p>