MPPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 40 of 100

Correct — C, Uniform Resource Locator. A URL is the address a browser uses to fetch a resource on the web: it says which protocol to use and where the resource sits. Both words matter — 'Uniform', the word fixed by the IETF standard (RFC 1738, 1994), and 'Locator', because it names the thing that locates the resource, not the place itself. A full URL reads scheme://host:port/path?query#fragment, e.g. https://www.example.com/notes/page?id=7.

• (a)Uniform Resource Location — First word right, last word wrong. The standard expansion is 'Locator' — an agent noun for the string that does the locating. 'Location' is the commonest slip because it is the everyday English word.
• (b)Universal Resource Location — Both the first and the last word are wrong — neither 'Universal' nor 'Location' appears in the standardised expansion.
• (d)Universal Resource Locator — The strongest trap. 'Universal' does have a historical footing — Tim Berners-Lee's early 1994 write-up was titled 'Universal Resource Identifiers in WWW' — but the term the IETF standardised, and the one exams accept, is 'Uniform'.

A URL is one kind of URI (Uniform Resource Identifier). A URI identifies a resource; a URL is a URI that also tells you how and where to get it, by naming the protocol (scheme) and the host. A URN (Uniform Resource Name) names a resource persistently without saying where it lives. When you type a URL, the browser hands the host part to DNS, which returns the IP address of the server, and then fetches the path over the scheme's protocol (usually HTTPS).

All four options here are one word apart from each other, so this is a pure precision test — the examiner is checking whether you learnt the standard term or the loose one you hear in conversation. Two swaps are being tried at once: Uniform↔Universal in the first word, Locator↔Location in the last. Memorise the exact four words, and separately remember why 'Universal' feels right (it was in the earliest web documents) so the trap loses its pull.

• URL = Uniform Resource Locator, standardised in RFC 1738 (1994).
• Structure: scheme://host:port/path?query#fragment — e.g. https://www.example.com/notes/page?id=7.
• A URL is a subtype of URI (Uniform Resource Identifier); a URN names a resource without giving its location.
• The host portion of a URL is translated into an IP address by DNS (Domain Name System).
• Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, devised the URL/URI addressing scheme along with HTTP and HTML; his 1994 document used the older word 'Universal'.

• Choosing 'Universal Resource Locator' — it sounds familiar because of early web documents, but the standard word is Uniform.
• Choosing 'Location' instead of 'Locator'.
• Treating URL and URI as interchangeable — a URL is a URI that also carries location/access information.

MPPSC's internet block is dominated by exact full-forms (URL, W3C, MPEG, DNS) and by 'which of these is NOT a browser/portal' questions. Learn the string exactly, word for word — a near-miss option is always on the paper.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the address https://www.example.com/notes?id=7, the part 'https' is called the:

  • (a)Scheme (protocol)
  • (b)Domain name
  • (c)Path
  • (d)Query string

  Answer(a) Scheme, i.e. the protocol the browser must use to fetch the resource.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which system translates the domain name inside a URL into the server's IP address?

  • (a)DNS (Domain Name System)
  • (b)FTP
  • (c)SMTP
  • (d)HTML

  Answer(a) DNS — the Domain Name System resolves the host name in a URL to an IP address.