[Xitami] DNS and VHosting

[Brian {Hamilton Kelly}]

In message <001a01c2115b$2a57d2d0$542de00c@MWGXP> "Many Lists" writes:

> Most other servers I have seen (UNIX and WIN) running Virtual Hosting or
> names based hosting will default to a particular webpage when the IP
> address is entered.

Correct; what one has to remember is that for virtual hosting to work at
all, the client [browser] must be using HTTP/1.1; the older protocols do
not *require* that the GET (or other HTTP request) shall specify the
"Host:" header as one of the request packet lines.  Without any such
indication, the server will obviously serve up the content of the default
"virtual host".  This may, or may not, exist.

[My ISP, Demon Internet, at first implemented web hosting for their
customers by assigning each a unique IP address, although all those IP
addresses pointed to one and the same (cluster of) machines(s).  So
requests were discriminated from each other by the IP address to which
the client was connecting.  But when they first implemented this, they
DID announce that once a sufficiently large majority of connections were
using HTTP/1.1 rather than HTTP/1.0 (they never supported HTTP/0.9,
SFAIK) then they would be putting all the accounts onto a single IP
address and using v1.1 virtual hosting to discriminate between accounts.]

-- 
Brian {Hamilton Kelly}                                          bhk@dsl.co.uk
    "We have gone from a world of concentrated knowledge and wisdom to one of
    distributed ignorance.  And we know and understand less while being incr-
    easingly capable."              Prof. Peter Cochrane, formerly of BT Labs