[TriLUG] OT: how can this URL resolve?

[Dean Price]

Safari didn't resolve either.

However, clicking on the link in Thunderbird (at least on Mac OSX) asked 
if I really wanted to visit http://202.172.233.37?

Dean Price

Christopher J. Knowles wrote:
> I'm more interested in which browser this worked in... I've tried it in IE, 
> Mozilla-Firefox, Mozilla, and Konqueror, none of them worked.
>
> CJK
>
> On Friday 03 February 2006 15:16, Christopher L Merrill wrote:
>   
>> I didn't think this was a legal URL without a top-level domain:
>>    http://3400329509/
>> but it worked in my browser
>> (the whole URL was http://3400329509/paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/index.php,
>> the site for a paypal scammer in Indonesia)
>>
>> pinging 3400329509, much to my suprise, resolved to
>>    202.172.233.37
>>
>> nslookup resulted in:
>>    $ nslookup 3400329509
>>    Server:  rlghnc-dns-cac-06.nc.rr.com
>>    Address:  24.25.5.51
>>    *** rlghnc-dns-cac-06.nc.rr.com can't find 3400329509: Non-existent
>> domain
>>
>> Also, a whois lookup fails...so I'm assuming there is some numeric
>> decoding applied by the network stack to turn it into an IP address...
>> anyone know what that decoding is?
>>
>> --
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Chris Merrill                  |  http://www.webperformance.com
>> Web Performance Inc.
>>
>> Website Load Testing and Stress Testing Software
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>