Re: hwg Re: Site checks please ????

John:

>Thinking of it simply, if you share an IP address then something would need
to detect something else other than IP to determine what to send back to the
server.<

The 'something' is host headers. The web server looks in the http headers to
see what they are and forwards the request to the appropriate virtual server
on the IP address.

This works fine for me (I have about 10 vservers on the same IP), and only
falls down (as Mike discovered) if the DNS is not set up properly or if
someone is using an ancient browser that doesn't send them. I would guess
that the huge majority of people hosting sites on a non-dedicated machine
use the same mechanism.

Note for lurkers: if just one person complains that a site is down, it may
not be a network problem. Sometimes, clearing the browser cache and
rebooting the client will make everything work again.

Lois Wakeman

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http://lois.co.uk
http://siteusability.com
http://communicationarts.co.uk
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