Tim B wrote:
Some light from an IT person here ...

Unix and Linux are case sensitive. You can set up sites as case
sensitive
there if you want. Generally not. Windows isn't case sensitive in
that
respect.


That's only part of the story.

The part of the url (or e-mail address, etc.) that is the FQDN (Fully
Qualified Domain Name) is not case sensitive. So in
http://servername.domainname.hierarchy/pathname the server name (often,
but not always www) and the domain name and hierarchy are not case
sensitive. Technically they are intended to be lower-case, but DNS
servers should be able to resolve them correctly no matter what the
case. Even DNS service running on *nix, which is the norm, will be able
to ignore the case of the FQDN part of the url.

Once you get onto the server, it could be case sensitive. Windows is not
case sensitive, so if the server is running IIS, it won't make a
difference. However the most popular webserver software is apache, and
is running on a *nix box, so the path name and the file name are going
to be case sensitive.

The http:// part of the address indicates the application protocol
(http, ftp, gopher, etc.), and whether or not you can use uppercase is
dependant on your browser's ability to interpret the instruction it's
giving. In most modern browsers it's optional, and if it's used is not
case sensitive.

Technically, the protocol and FQDN are intended to always be lower-case.
Convention used to be that even the case sensitive part of the url would
be in lower-case, but Windows' habit of changing the first letter of a
file name to a capital letter, and then people uploading those file
structures to *nix webservers have complicated things for everyone. No
longer can people say that url's are lower-case, but it's also not true
that the whole url is case sensitive.

However, none of that was relevant in solving the original poster's
problem. Turns out he had a HOSTS file that was resolving the url to an
old IP address without even asking the DNS server.

After that, doesn't gardening sound pretty simple?

--
Warren H.

==========
Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my
employer, my friends, nor (as she often tells me) my wife.
Any resemblance to the views of anybody living or dead is
coincidental. No animals were hurt in the writing of this
response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants
to go outside now.