Quick DNS question...

[robb]

I know enough about DNS to sound really stupid to people who actually understand how it works. So, here's my question:

How come when I go to http://schnells.com it brings up a different page than http://69.73.170.204 ??? When I do a NSLOOKUP on schnells.com, it comes back with the IP address 69.73.170.204. How is it possible that they bring up different pages?!?!?!

A friend just registered schnells.com at JaguarPC and we came across this little anomoly. I have no explanation for it. Anyway, thanks for your help!

Rob B.

[Vin DSL]

Hrm... thanks for posting this. I was digging around your (empty) web space, checking out the anchors in Apache and I noticed something extremely odd that applies to your site, my site, and I assume everyone else's as well. I just fired off a ticket to Tech Support...

[jason]

DNS is the equivalent of calling 411 (if you live in the US) for directory assistance--you provide a name, they give you a number (in this case an IP), not a direct connection to who you want to talk to. Once you make the "call" you still have to ask for Joe, or Sally, or Bob, and your web browser is doing the same thing.

When a user requests a page, their computer does an nslookup on the domain name to find the IP. It then asks the web server on that IP to return the page that you've requested. A part of that request is the HTTP_HOST header which contains the requested domain name. The web server uses that to figure out what site to send you to. This allows JPC to host many sites on a single server without having to use a ton of IP addresses. This also allows you to add subdomains, parked domains, and multi-hosted domains to your site.

--Jason

[robb]

Interesting... Thanks for the reply!

Rob