I am looking for a dedicated server to house about 20 sites of mine. All but about 5 of them have their own domain names. Can someone explain "name based hosting" to me?

I am looking at http://rackshack.net/ http://4webspace.net http://www.cobaltrack.com and http://www.venturesonline.com/. Any opinions on them?

Thanks for your help! I'm off to scour the boards again for info...

I believe the explanation comes down to:

Name based hosting
Domain names share an IP address

IP based hosting
Each domain has a dedicated IP address

Anticipated question:

No, there is no significant difference. Dedicated IPs have a temporary advantage when moving sites to another server, and there is a way around that as well. You can do a search and see previous discussions on the issue

On my server (and other cpanel based servers) my clients can access their site by going to http://webfors.com/~username/ while they wait for DNS changes to propagate. As far as ftp'ing into the server, you can use any domain setup of the server. As long as you enter YOUR username and password, you'll be brought to YOUR /home directory. Therefore there is no benefit of a dedicated IP as far as I'm concerned.

So then in your opinion it's not a "benefit" to allow customers the use of SSL? Maybe not if you're hosting Pokemon sites but unless you think it's "beneficial" to tell e-business sites to go screw themselves I'd have to say you're mistaken.



[Edited by Woofcat on 03-02-2001 at 08:01 PM]

Has anyone use venturesonline.com?

Their dedicated price is quite good I must say.

Cobaltrack requires minimum 6 mths contract I believe.

Originally posted by Woofcat
So then in your opinion it's not a "benefit" to allow customers the use of SSL? Maybe not if you're hosting Pokemon sites but unless you think it's "beneficial" to tell e-business sites to go screw themselves I'd have to say you're mistaken.



[Edited by Woofcat on 03-02-2001 at 08:01 PM]

Wow, how articulate! :)

Yes, you are correct in that to setup a secure site you can have only ONE secure site per IP, but you can use that IP for many other things.

I have my secure site https://secure.webfors.com setup on the same IP as 50 other domains. It's not an IP specific issue, it's a port specific issue. You can not have more than ONE domain accessing the same port (443 for ssl) on the same IP.

So if EVERY single clients requires their own secure site (which is not the case 98% of the time) then yes, you would require an IP for each of them.

What I'm saying is that for the "average" client their is NO benefit of a unique IP. If you would like to get into specifics, then I'm sure I could find a few instances where one would be required.

It's a complete waste of resources to give out unique IPs to each and every client.

Oh, and try and perform a server move from one data center to the other when you have wasted IP resources by giving one to each and every one of your clients. It's not the most enjoyable experience.

It has nothing to do with the cost of IPs ($.40 each), it's has everything to do with the responsible allocation of these IPs.

Originally posted by tabernack
Oh, and try and perform a server move from one data center to the other when you have wasted IP resources by giving one to each and every one of your clients. It's not the most enjoyable experience.

It has nothing to do with the cost of IPs ($.40 each), it's has everything to do with the responsible allocation of these IPs.

I quite agree , In fact all of our sites are also on same ip , and Ip resourses should be used with responsibility

There are around 95 currently.

But i want to know if there is a limit (technical or feasible ) to the number of sites i can put on one single ip.

I mean how far can i go 200,300 ?

Regards
Manish Kapadia
Bombay-India

Nope! There is no limit. You can have as many sites on the same IP as you can have sites on the same server. The limiting factor will be the hardware resources (cpu, disk space, etc..)

There's an ISP somewhere in the UK (I think?) which has somewhere over a million sites hosted on 4 IP addresses. Naturally, those IP addresses point to load balancers, which then hand the requests out to a huge server farm.

Originally posted by tabernack
Oh, and try and perform a server move from one data center to the other when you have wasted IP resources by giving one to each and every one of your clients. It's not the most enjoyable experience.

It has nothing to do with the cost of IPs ($.40 each), it's has everything to do with the responsible allocation of these IPs.

"Name based" hosting may be fine for non-critical sites, but there are reasons other than SSL and anonymous FTP why a user might want a dedicated IP.

From a user's point of view, insisting on a dedicated IP gives certain valuable freedoms. I control the zone files on several name servers for some sites and domain names. By doing so, I control where the URL's point, and can change them quickly if I have to. I'm not at the mercy of a cranky or uncaring host.

This has served me in good stead several times. First, I mirror one of my sites to a second site. Several times (though not lately) the main server was down, once for a few days. I simply switched the IP address in my A record for the domain, and was back up while the provider fiddled with the server.

Very recently I moved a site from one provider to another. A week before my old account ran out, I called to say I was cancelling, figuring I had a week to make my final tweaks and switch the A record. The old provider deleted my site instantly! I changed the A record and was back in four hours. If I didn't host at sites with dedicated IPs, at the least I would have had to change the nameservers and wait for the whole mess to propogate.

rapidtransit, dedicated vs. shared IP addresses makes no difference for what you mention. You can manage your own DNS while sharing an IP address with others; places like centralinfo.net give you free (and remarkably stable) DNS zones and you merely have to point your A records at the IP which your site is hosted on, whether it is shared or not.

Originally posted by cperciva
rapidtransit, dedicated vs. shared IP addresses makes no difference for what you mention. You can manage your own DNS while sharing an IP address with others; places like centralinfo.net give you free (and remarkably stable) DNS zones and you merely have to point your A records at the IP which your site is hosted on, whether it is shared or not.


I really don't follow. It's like this. I have foo.com on one server at one IP address. blah.com is on another server with another IP address. All files except the home page are on subdirectories off the root, and one completely mirrors the other. (The core content of each site is completely different).

Ordinarily foo.com points to one IP address and blah.com points to the other, and users of either site never access or see the mirror files.

If one server goes down, I can point both IPs to the same server and noone knows the difference.

I don't see how I could do this with name hosting. I suppose something could be done if I involve the hosting company, but a) I'm dependent on their prompt attention and good will and b) they're apt to say "well, that's something different. We'll have to charge extra for it."

Even at hosts with good service reps I don't want to be dependent on their support for things I can do myself.

BTW, centralinfo.net no longer provides free DNS.

The limiting factor is normally file handlers (which you can get around by recompiling), but chances are you're going to run into a wall with CPU and/or memory before then.

Not to say that IP based hosting is any less scalable. I've seen servers with over 400 IPs bound to them.

Later,