[sclug] domain / www hosting

[Simon Huggins]

On Sun, Dec 24, 2006 at 05:54:58PM +0000, Ed Davies wrote:
> Simon Huggins wrote:
> >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.
> OK.  I'm obviously not understanding something.  Here's an example of
> how I think these sort of things work.

> I have some web space on Nildram's servers (www.edavies.nildram.co.uk).
> A chain of CNAME records point that to saturn.nildram.co.uk which has
> an IP address of 195.149.33.75.  Suppose I was to go to Black Cat and
> register edavies.name.uk and set up a DNS A record for www.edavies.name.uk
> pointing to 195.149.33.75.  If a browser referenced www.edavies.name.uk
> then it would send a GET request to 195.149.33.75 (fine so far) but
> with the Host: header containing www.edavies.name.uk.  Nildram's
> server would say WTF is that and reject the request.

Yes, that's absolutely correct.

> I could go to Nildram and ask them to set up a virtual host server
> for www.edavies.name.uk.  They'd say fine, that'll be an extra so many
> pounds a year for commercial web hosting.

Yup.

> In this sense, they can insist (as you asked in an earlier message in
> this thread) that they do the DNS hosting - specifically hosting
> domain names which fit in with their pattern of domain names.

But this bit is where I fail to understand you.

Nildram charge you extra to sort out the virtual host.  They may or may
not do DNS by default for your domain and they may well encourage you to
point your new edavies.me.uk at it *BUT* there's no point in them
insisting that you do so and they don't really care that you are/aren't
using their DNS servers.

And in setting up the virtual host, Nildram have not insisted that they
do DNS for your domain.  They've just set up a virtual host and then you
can point www.edavies.me.uk at the right server and this time it won't
go "WTF?" :)

I just find it a little odd that a company providing webhosting would
*insist* (i.e. actually bother to check) that you were using their
nameservers.

I'm not quite sure I understand your "specifically hosting domain names
which fit in with their pattern of domain names".
Are you getting confused with say edavies.nildram.co.uk or some such
that they might offer you as part of some other service?

Web hosting and DNS hosting often go together but they don't have to.

> Is this right or is there some other way to use the virtual host
> with the "wrong" domain name?

It's not wrong though if you've paid them to host it is it?  You are
right that they need to set it up at their end for it to work (i.e. you
can't just point www.edavies.me.uk at them without telling them) but
once you have there's no reason it won't work.

Simon.

-- 
[ "Did someone say they wanted toast?" -- Talkie Toaster               ]