Re: your mail

Jacques Caron (jcaron@pressimage.fr)
Sun, 7 May 1995 02:00:40 +0500

> On Thu, 4 May 1995 Ramani Iyer wrote:
>
> > I am new to this mailing list and am not sure if this
> > has been discussed. But here it goes.
> > Is it possible to have 2 different names resolve to
> > the same server but point to two different home pages.
> > For example : x.y.z should point to page 1 in my sun and
> > address http://a.b.c should point to page 2
> > in my sun.
>
>You can't do it with DNS. Here's one approach:
>
> From: Rupesh Kapoor <rupesh@altair.shaktiweb.com>
>
> That's not how it works. You have to run two different httpd's (with
> different root areas, of course). They would run on diff ports, say one
> on 80 (default) and the other on 2000. URL for the first is
>
> http://xyz.com/
>
> and that for the second
>
> http://xyz.com:2000/
> or http://abcd.com:2000/
>
>Alternatively, if your computer has multiple network interfaces (or
>can be configured to pretend that it does), you can assign one IP
>address to abcd.com, assign another to xyz.com, and run a server which
>behaves differently depending on which IP address is used to contact
>it. The important thing is that the IP addresses must be distinct,
>since an HTTP client doesn't try to tell the server what it thinks the
>server's name is.
>
>The server you use has to be aware of this arrangement as well, of
>course. Patches are available for the NCSA server (and probably for
>CERN as well); Apache, an NCSA derivative, comes with this code
>integrated in to the main body (and we've even gotten around to
>documenting it). See
>
> http://www.hyperreal.com/apache/docs/virtual-host.html
>
>for details on how this works...
>
>rst

Hey, this gets on my nerves. When will someone do something about it? It's so
easy to add a f...ing "Host: " or "Full-URI: " header that would enable us
to do that without such a hack. Multiple IPs per host _is_ a hack. It can
only be done on a small number of OSes, and it is a real waste of IP
addresses. I _thought_ we were running out of IP address space. Looks like
you guys just want to use it still more quickly!

I have to agree that the guy that came up with this was clever, as this
works with the installed base, but such a small modification of the
protocol would be _sooooo_ easy to implement in both clients and servers
that I think that every single client and server existing would be upgraded
in a matter of weeks, and that the installed base would in a few months be
80 to 90% converted.

One would still need a "choose which home page you want" page for the case
when the server does not know who was in fact selected, and that would work
for everybody till he switches to a newer client.

So, why, _why_, *why*, WHY? A single line! It's so easy!

The worst is, it's been discussed a number of times, everytime everyone
agrees and says, OK, that's a good idea, let's do it, and then nobody
moves. What should I do? Send every web browser and server author a
personal mail to ask him to do it?

Hope this one is the good one :-)

Jacques

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|Jacques Caron | Pressimage Telematique |
|jcaron@pressimage.fr | 5/7 rue Raspail |
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