[sclug] domain / www hosting

[Simon Huggins]

On Sun, Dec 24, 2006 at 02:34:21PM +0000, Ed Davies wrote:
> Simon Huggins wrote:
> >You can query the servers they tell you to use directly for
> >www.yourdomainname and then use that IP/CNAME as the record in the
> >zone you host yourself.
> Won't the IP address of the free web space be shared with other
> virtual hosts on the same server? 

Quite probably.

> If you want to point another domain name at that address don't you
> also need to get the web provider to deal with the HTTP Host: header
> with your domain name in it or can you use CNAME records to get round
> this?

This is mostly irrelevant.  The hosting provider sets up a virtual host
for that website and the fact that you do the DNS or that they do the
DNS makes no difference neither to the Host: header that your browser
will supply nor to the IP that the same browser contacts.

CNAMEs are a red herring here.  Ultimately your web browser resolves it
to an IP anyway which it then connects to and when the web server sees a
connection it doesn't know that you've resolved it via an A record or a
CNAME to an A record at all (hence the need for a Host: header for
virtual hosting).

Simon.

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