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Introduction
Virtual Servers - The idea
Protocols
HTTPS is HTTP over SSL, the Secure Socket Layer, which provides encrypted communication. The default port for HTTPS is 443. FTP, File Transfer Protocol, is an older protocol that is still used for some purposes. The default port for FTP is 21.
IP Address and Port
Usually, it is possible to use any port by specifying it explicitly. Thus, the URL http://www.roxen.com/ will use the default port, 80 in this case, while the URL http://skuld.idonex.se:4711/ will use the port 4711.
DNS
The symbolic names are handled by name servers. For example, Idonex's name server handles domain roxen.com, among others. Configurations of new names under a domain are done by configuring the name server.
IP-less HTTP
In HTTP, the web site wanted is also sent through the protocol in the Host header. Thus, it is possible to make several web sites share the same IP address and port. When a virtual server in Challenger is configured for IP-less HTTP, it will have no port of its own. Instead it will rely on getting requests from another virtual server that does listen to the port. Really old browsers such as Netscape 1.0, do not support the Host header, and therefore can not connect to web sites using IP-less HTTP. Therefore, it is strongly recommended to upgrade such browsers.
Interfaces
It is also possible to configure virtual interfaces for the sole purpose of handling more IP addresses. How this is done varies between operating systems. If you want to handle more than one HTTPS or FTP server on each computer, or don't like IP-less HTTP, you will need to know how to set up additional virtual interfaces. |