guideline for name-based web hosting justification

[PSchroebel]

The key to Name based web hosting is using the nameservers
that reside on that host.
Whereas, a host is actually a machine not a www, ftp or pop
or smtp sub-server.
Therein, you are only limited to the number of virtual hosts
by the host (machine's) ability.
Apache uses 500 as a limit however we have over 1000 on one
Linux box that has 4 cpu's
and gig of ram.

This is addressed in BIND VERSION 8.0 and it works.

The inherent name servers do the parsing and it works just
fine.
In fact the newer rack mount web servers come ready for
v-hosting.
You only need to assign an IP when the customer needs a SSL
or some other IP related
point to point connection. Which usually invokes co-location
and is another matter all together.

The IIS with NT is a IP Hog and we have had disastrous
problems with v-hosting on NT Servers.
We push clients to Unix, Sun and Linux that support
Microsoft's extensions.
We have had problems with Cold Fusion's database and apps
but, we are working on it.

Of course there will always be an issue that a www site
should have it own IP as this is what the customers expect.
This will be the real challenge to over come.

And here is their reason:
If the dns fails then how do they get their site? On a
v-host named based-you wont get their.
If they have an IP mapped they will get to their site
provide that the host has not failed.
Another, issue that we see is the webhost customers with
alarms on their sites.
So let those Nameservers blink for an update and the phone
ring off of the hook.

Slave to the Machines.......


Sincerely,

Peter Schroebel
paschroebel at erols.com
pschroebel at fullport.com







----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Horwath" <drechsau at geeks.org>
To: "Ron Hensley" <ronh at INTERCOM.NET>
Cc: "Mike Horwath" <drechsau at geeks.org>; "Matt Bailey"
<mbailey at journey.net>; <arin-discuss at arin.net>
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2000 9:25 AM
Subject: Re: guideline for name-based web hosting
justification


On Mon, Sep 11, 2000 at 08:27:16PM -0400, Ron Hensley wrote:
> Couldn't this be implemented on the WWW server however?
With NT's IIS for
> example, or Apache
> under any platform you can of course have 1000 WWW domain
sites all sharing
> one IP Address
> bound to the NIC Card. While some monitoring software my
only look at the ip
> addresses and thus cant differentiate,
> the WWW server itself sorts the connections based, not on
the IP Address,
> but rather on the content in the packets.
> More to the point, on the URL being requested.
>
> Based on that, each WWW site generates its own unique log
files for that
> site.
> Thus software can be written to total the byte counts of
the hits to that
> WWW site. WebTrends comes
> to mind though it doesn't produce billing data of course.
>
> Also any machine sitting on the network, like a firewall,
that's gathering
> statistics on bandwidth by IP Address
> could just as easily inspect the data payload and generate
statistics based
> on that content of the given WWW site.
> Yes I realize that would be processor intensive, however
firewalls do that
> now to look for attack signatures and the like.
>
> To make it short, it sounds like your asking to use 30,000
ip addresses for
> 30,000 WWW sites, when you only
> need one, because your software vendor has written bad
billing software that
> doesn't support virtual WWW hosts
> sharing the same ip address.

Oh my god, this has gotta be one of the worst things you
could ask
someone to do.

Go and buy all this gear (many thousands of dollars) just so
you can
do the billing you have been doing that costs pennies per
year to do.
It would be cheaper to put each web site on its own server
(or hell,
put each on its own interface card) than to purchase the
kinds of
hardware needed to do what we already do with current
hardware and
software.

With PC hardare going for a couple hundred bux, I could put
each web
site on its own server.  Sure, I would run out of equipment
room space
someday, but that day isn't for some time.

The days of running out of IP addresses is basically over.

Yes, there is still a crunch, but with IPv6 around the
corner (haha),
this issue will be moot in the foreseeable future.

This is an absolutely silly rule that penalizes ANYONE that
bills for
actual bandwidth used and not for number of bytes
transferred.

--
Mike Horwath           IRC: Drechsau
drechsau at Geeks.ORG
Home: 763-540-6815  1901 Sumter Ave N, Golden Valley, MN
55427
Opinions stated in this message, or any message posted by
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period.