Re: FoRK Help.

David Crook (dcrook@commwerks.com)
Mon, 14 Jun 1999 13:54:07 -0700


I don't think that its a apache issue, its a DNS one. When you set up a
domain record, say for foo.com, you can specify different IP addresses for
www.foo.com and for foo.com if you want to, but nobody does this because it
cause a lot of confusion. So the easiest approach is just to map them to
the same IP so that people can type "http://www.foo.com" or
"http://foo.com" and both will go to your website.

An alternative strategy would be to tell the webserver to redirect requests
from "foo.com" to "www.foo.com". The two names would have to have
different IP addresses to work with all browsers, most 2.X browsers and
everything more recent would be able to resolve correctly with the same IP.

One last little bit thrown into the picture is that new browsers have a
feature that will automatically try to resolve "http://www.foo.com" when
someone types "foo.com" into the URL/Address line. But normally it will
try to access "http://foo.com" first.

So to answer your question, that someone is correct. If you really wanted
to be a annoying SOB you can define www.foo.com and foo.com to point to
totally different IP addresses, these could represent two web servers
running on the same computer or two two different computers. The one catch
here is that if the computer listed at foo.com is down, your browser might
try the www.foo.com server as an alternative. This behavior isn't
specified by any RFC, but some do it anyways.

Dave

At 01:14 PM 6/14/99 -0700, Tim Byars wrote:
>ON another list someone is trying to tell me that
>
>http://www.foo.com
>and
>http://foo.com
>will resolve to different domains
>
>and I quote:
>
>At 12:42 PM -0700 6/14/99, Kynn Bartlett wrote:
>> This is completely incorrect. There is no guarantee that
>> www.foo.com and foo.com must be equivalent.
>
>
>So, if I could get any and all help on this I'd appreciate it. RFC's,
>Apache set up Read Me's anything.
>
>
>
>Tim
>--
>
>"If at first you don't succeed, come back and we'll beat you again."
> - Degeneration X
>
> <>tbyars@earthlink.net <>
>

---
David Crook - davec@commwerks.com
CommWerks - Industrial Strength Internet Solutions