Hi John, On 16-May-00, you wrote:
>> eg. Typing http://www.microsoft.com and
>> http://207.46.130.45 will do exactly the same thing
> However lots of sites are on Virtual Hosts so the IP number relates to
> lots of domains, which the computer on the number then resolves.
> This also allows the use of domains such as smart.money.com ,
> fast.money.com , no.money.com
To elaborate on this/clarify it a bit for general information, as John
rightly says often a whole number of hostnames will resolve to the same IP
address. That's it as far as DNS is concerned, but from thereon web
software (if we are referring to websites) takes over. Not only does a
modern web browser connect to the IP address and request such-and-such a
page, it also sends the *hostname* of the site it's trying to access as the
header Host: in its message to the server. This allows for web server
software to be written to deal differently with identical connections but
which have different Host: headers. So you can have one computer running
one web server hosting an unlimited number of completely unrelated domains.
In this context the server is said to be acting as a "Virtual Server".
Here's an example from the local web server which runs on my network (not
accessible to the outside world, but it demonstrates the point well):
<VirtualHost 192.168.0.1>
DocumentRoot /usr/local/httpd/htdocs/oslo
ServerName oslo
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost 192.168.0.1>
DocumentRoot /usr/local/httpd/htdocs/test
ServerName test
</VirtualHost>
In this case the DNS is set up so that the hostnames "test" and "oslo" both
resolve to the IP address 192.168.0.1. However accessing http://test/ and
http://oslo/ will result in entirely different pages being served in each
case.
_____________________________________________________________
NetConnect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send an 'unsubcribe'
message to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
