Hello!

I am looking into rackshack.net for dedicated server. I've been reselling hosting space on shared server for couple of years now and I have only seen ip based hosting. So I am new to name based hosting.

So I am curious what I would need a unique ips for besides SSL? Perhaps we could get a list of those issues that require ip addresses in this thread.

Thank you!

Named based hosting got possible with HTTP1.1 - and today virtually noone is using a browser which does not use HTTP1.1 ( very old IE and Netscape versions, older than version 3.0 if not even older does not support it ) so that would not count as a valid excuse...

The problem is that your customers cant use IP-addressing ( http://xxx.xx.xxx.xxx ) in links etc. That became a problem for me some time ago when I needed to change host ( and rewrite the whole site from ASP to PHP ). I wanted to move parts of the site to the new server as they were rewritten to PHP. So I never wanted to transfer DNS until the whole site was rewritten - from the original ASP site I linked to the new site based on IP-address.

Not sure if these cases happen often ( and it could easily been solved with using a temporary domain name on the new server ), anyway at that point IP based hosting was my only choice.

Yes, but depending on how the namebased server is set up, you could have addressed the unpropagated site as:

http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/~username/

and that would work just as well.

There are a lot of pickey customers that just HAVE to have IP's. Ask them why and they bite your head off. They have no reason, its just "cool". GERRRRRRRRRRR!!!

A friend of mine set up his servers with separate IP's for his web server, email, ftp, news, ns1, ns2, ssl. He then put all his user's web sites on one IP.

His reasoning was that it was easier to administer and a DoS or "hack" attack on one IP wouldn't affect the other servers.

Not sure I wholly agree with him but ...

Originally posted by Haze
There are a lot of pickey customers that just HAVE to have IP's. Ask them why and they bite your head off. They have no reason, its just "cool". GERRRRRRRRRRR!!!

I've learned that it's ok to tell these customers to keep shopping for a host and that they won't get it from me.

Well if client wants unique ip for their site, simply charge them a markup of your cost to use the ip address.

Problem is there are a lot of hosts out there that offer ip-based hosting. Efreeservers offers free unlimited IPs and people who host servers from alabanza or vdi all offer ip-based hosting.

Im about half way through the cobalt 4 RaQ manual, seems that you need unique IP in order to have anonymous ftp for ftp.yourdomain.com. Please verify, i service a lot of clients who like having anonymous ftp.

Also, with name-based hosting, can one setup multiple ftp accounts for one virtual site?

Also last thing, on page 53 in the RaQ4 manual it talks about email accounts for name-based hosting must have unique usernames? Does this mean if accountone.com has info@accountone.com then accounttwo.com cant have info@accounttwo.com? Please tell me I am reading this incorrect!

Thank you for info!

Originally posted by kipper3d
Im about half way through the cobalt 4 RaQ manual, seems that you need unique IP in order to have anonymous ftp for ftp.yourdomain.com. Please verify, i service a lot of clients who like having anonymous ftp.

Also, with name-based hosting, can one setup multiple ftp accounts for one virtual site?

Also last thing, on page 53 in the RaQ4 manual it talks about email accounts for name-based hosting must have unique usernames? Does this mean if accountone.com has info@accountone.com then accounttwo.com cant have info@accounttwo.com? Please tell me I am reading this incorrect!

On a RaQ, out of the box, yes, you need a dedicated IP for anonymous FTP, though I'd only offer it to people you trust.

Name based hosting can have multiple FTP accounts for one virtual site, yes.

Re: email accounts for name-based hosting must have unique usernames? Well, it doesn't matter if the account is name-based or has a dedicated IP. There can only be one username (ie: bob) set up on the system. This is not unique to RaQs, this is pretty much how it works. The way you get around this on any linux server, is to set up 'info2@accounttwo.com' and set an alias of 'info' to 'info2' for that user on that site. In other words, you can have email sent to 'info2@accounttwo.com' and everything will be happy and joyous.

Ok so if someone send e-mail on the info@bla-bla2.com and that is aliassed to a info2@bla-bla2.com when i send him a reply it would have a info2@bla-bla2.com in the address right? not info@bla-bla2.com

boy this email issue is confusing.

Excuse my newbie-ness, Ive never run into this problem as a reseller on shared server.

So are you saying if i set up two (2) virtual sites one.com and two.com

That the server cant differentiate between info@one.com and info@two.com unless i setup aliasing?

I better finish the RaQ manual, just about to the email section..

Originally posted by Angel78
Ok so if someone send e-mail on the info@bla-bla2.com and that is aliassed to a info2@bla-bla2.com when i send him a reply it would have a info2@bla-bla2.com in the address right? not info@bla-bla2.com

Well, in Outlook Express for example, you can specify what the reply address is, and you'd enter info@blah-blah2.com there. Your actual account username would be info2. No one has to know that however and the only real difference is that your actual box would be info2, not info (which is already taken by someone else).

Originally posted by kipper3d
boy this email issue is confusing.

Excuse my newbie-ness, Ive never run into this problem as a reseller on shared server.

So are you saying if i set up two (2) virtual sites one.com and two.com

That the server cant differentiate between info@one.com and info@two.com unless i setup aliasing?

I better finish the RaQ manual, just about to the email section..

I guess that sums it up. The server will deliever it to the user box info. For example. My email address is chicken<at>woobster.com. I can sent mail to chicken<at>eebu.com (another domain on the server), and check my chicken<at>woobster.com email and there will be an email there. It is being sent to the user.

Now, the way to get around this 'problem' so to speak, is to set up any other user on eebu.com and alias 'chicken' to that user. If I do that, then email sent to chicken<at>eebu.com would drop into the the aliased user's box instead of being delievered to the user 'chicken'.

Make sense? Really it isn't as confusing as it might sound.

I'll also add that some control panel systems do things a bit differently (not RaQs). When you set up a user, say 'info' for the domain blah.com, they automatically change the username to:

info@blah.com

-and alias 'info' to 'info@blah.com' all in one shot. You may want to adapt this method of setting up accounts (though somewhat manaually, with the added step of having to enter something in the alias field), and just set up the alias 'info' when you set up the user 'info@blah.com'.

You could also instruct your users to do this, and it might actually lead to less confusion than if they try to set up 'webmaster', etc (assuming 'webmaster' has already been taken).

but i have an account on nice provider (hostrocket.com) and that problem doesnt exist.i can create unlimited pop3 account on their control pannel and i just have to login to the pop3 server as username@domain.com without problem. How do they do it?

then the CP does this aliasing thing automaticly. or you are on a win2000 plan?

no, linux

and is it possible to login to the pop3 with an alias?

No, you wouldn't log in with the alias. If I'm correct, it is cpanel (or variation thereof) that set up usernames this way. You can dupicate this on a RaQ by basically setting up all usernames in the form of:

username@domain.com and then adding an alias of username to that user (not as complicated as it sounds). Takes one second more than just setting up a user.

yes but users usually creates their emails! i mean, i give them like 15 accounts that they can create. Do i have to explain the whole process to them?? dont u think its complicated to all my users?

I interpreted the previous emails to mean that if I sent an email to webmaster@clientdomain.com, it might be delivered to the user webmaster on my RAQ. I did some tests and did not have that happen.

I have admin.server.com and then a virtual site www.server.com. Webmaster is the site admin for www.server.com.

For my client domain(lets say www.bobsflysishing.com), I have given them RAQ usernames with a prefix (for bobsflyfishing.com, I would have "bob_master" for the webmaster, "bob_boss" for bob(the owner), and "bob_manager" for his store manager, etc.)

I have a catch all pointing to bob_master, and when I send email to webmaster@bobsfishing.com, it is delivered properly.

Has anyone else had different results?

dominet - Well, many things confuse customers and this is one of them. If you have a decent FAQ, or include instructions with the intial email (as I do), then your chances of confusing them are lessened. If they don't read it, attempt to create a user name that exists, and are confused, then chances are you'll get a support email, hopefully you can copy&paste a reply from your FAQ.

monkey_boy - the catch all is preventing the email from reaching the actual webmaster box (not really a bad thing in this case). If you took off the catch-all and tried again, the email would be delivered to the webmaster box on the other domain (not exactly what you want in this case).

A valid use for another IP would be a redirector script,

This way you can offer URL forwarding, and all you have to do is point the name at the static ip, make a single database entry and forwarding starts to work!!

i have about 5000 names pointing to 1 ip, for the purpose of redirection