David Jencks wrote: > > On Jan 16, 2006, at 12:39 PM, Jeff Genender wrote:
>> I don't agree here. According to the Tomcat doc, the Host name is >> "Network name of this virtual host, as registered in your Domain Name >> Service server." So it is a virtual host name. Where I think where the >> code can be expanded is searching the alias name for a match in case the >> name is not the same as the VH. This is probably a good thing to add. >> > OK, good. I'm glad to find out the host name and virtual host name are > connected. Well I don't know if I agree with this. Virtual host are just names that are supplied by the client application and they reflect how the client browser resolved the IP address. If I put an entry in my own local host file of "wibble" with the same IP address as www.apache.org, the I will be able to enter http://wibble/context in my browser and the apache.org server will receive a request like GET /context HTTP/1.1 Host: wibble The virtual host name mechanism is used to handle the fact that it is common to have many names mapping to the same IP. The intent of the host field is to allow a server to write URLs in the same name space as the client - But there is nothing that requires these name to be meaningful to the server as a network address in anyway. The most important thing to remember with virtual hosts, is that it is user supplied data - and nothing to do with the network path. The host name can be almost anything, including incorrect IP addresses. Some users incorrectly use virtual hosts as some form of security. I think it is important for us not to encourage this by treating virtual host names as network addresssed. OK - so this does not help this thread very much - but I just wanted to make it clear how virtual hosts work.
