Regarding defunctness, there's nothing magical about the 'www' string - it can be anything, as long as it's not the DNS zone apex (~='base domain'). There are l

Regarding defunctness, there's nothing magical about the 'www' string - it can be anything, as long as it's not the DNS zone apex (~='base domain'). There are limitations on what you can do with the zone apex entry (such as no CNAMEing it), but no limitations on other entries. 'www' is just convention. As to your question, it's a bit of both. I'm not a network admin, though, so I'll let someone a bit more skilled pipe up. I have run into difficulties with migrating 'bare domains' in a small business environment due to these limitations, though. Not insurmountable, but required more work to cover the issues. Of course, when you're 'big', you'll be dealing with these kinds of issues a lot more.