Often odd webpage addresses mean that you are visiting the wrong place. But are they all just as bad? Below we'll look at what's www2 and why we'll consider other similarly named domains.
Definition of www
The www prefix is the convention of naming to mark a website as referring to the url. To access various services, you would have to use other prefixes such as FTP, mail and NNTP (Usenet news server). For the ease of website administrators, they could also indicate specific servers.
What about www2?
Www with an added number is a method of naming a slightly old-school domain that some websites still use. Developers use it to identify and name different server subdomains or hostnames. For example, www2.website.com, www3.website.com, etc. could be subsections of a hypothetical website called www.website.com.
Website managers use this load management strategy. If there is overload, crash, or technical maintenance on a server with a www domain, you can be redirected to another server called www2, www3, www4, etc. The redirect can occur automatically. More sophisticated and specialized methods are available to handle the workload on the network, but these addresses are still present.
It's an uncommon component of the environment that we rarely find. Does this have to be cause for concern?
Safety of www2
Don't panic when a number appeared suddenly after www. If a server is open again, you can be redirected back to www. Numbered web sites as such pose no threat whatsoever.
You must always ensure, however, that the remaining part of the domain is the one you need. Also verify that if you have any doubts, the domain is real. Avoid opening links from websites that you do not fully trust or that modify their original name.
Overall...
It's hard to tell what's going on behind the scenes just by looking at the prefix of the WWW, but as long as the domain name is the same, you usually don't have to think about alternate hostnames or subdomains.
You will probably no longer see very many sites using this, as more advanced load-balancing methods are now available that work mostly behind the scenes, but there is nothing inherently insecure about adding numbers to your WWW, and if a site has been working well with this approach, they might just not see the point of changing it. In addition, it often appears on banking websites that use various subdomains for security purposes and may have called them with the WWW convention.
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