Re: SUMMARY: Tweaking a big Solaris box for WWW service

From: M. Hedlund (hedlund@best.com)
Date: Thu Nov 02 1995 - 19:17:14 CST


dks@spies.com (dk smith) wrote:
> I've seen some ISPs that handle a hundred different domains for Web
> service (e.g. best.com). Do they run separate instantiations of a Web
> server for each domain? Sounds like a maintenance headache. If they don't
> do it this way, then what might they do?

I can't answer your question about ifconfig aliasing other than to say
I've gotten above 20 aliases for one interface without noticing a severe
hit -- others may have more informative experiences. As to Best, though,
they've written a custom server (hacked NCSA, I think) that deals with
their aliased servers. I do know that there is one centralized software
process handling those requests -- not every Best user has a separate
server instantiation for his or her own domain. As to how the server does
it, it appears to run through the following:

if the host is www.best.com
   fulfill the request
otherwise
   lookup the user associated with the requested host
   retrieve the page from their directory
   return the requested document _without_ a redirect

(In other words, a request for a customer's domain at
http://www.customer.com/ does _not_ redirect to
http://www.best.com/~customer/.)

In order to accomplish this, I assume they have modified their server such
that it is aware of the ifconfig alias requesting it. This would be
necessary because the HTTP request does not contain information about the
host to which the client was sent. Therefore they couldn't just alias
everything to one server without modifying the server first.

M. Hedlund <hedlund@best.com>



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