VHosting

[datawolf@ibm.net]

KeithSmith wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I have about 50 questions about VHosting.
> 
> Name Vs IP based Virtual hosting.
> 
> 1) The Apache documentation does not make it clear
> which is better - Name based VHosting or IP Based
> VHosting.
> 
> Which is better and why?

Name based hosting is cheaper because you don't need an IP address for
every host.  But IP based hosting is probably technically superior
because (1) reverse DNS lookups work, (2) some archaic browsers don't
support it, and (3) you can reach the site by IP address.

But that's not to say that IP based is completely better, just
technically better.

> 2) I was told the following:
> 
> "I'm handling some 300+ domains right now...
> IP based is nice, if you can afford the IP's, and
> the boxes.
> After 50 or so, the machine starts becoming more
> taxed by the load of the configuration, by having
> to handle that many different configurations for
> the NIC. It depends on the machine's networking.
> If you have a few hundred domains, suddenly your
> IP based hosting becomes much more of a pain,
> just to manage all of those IP's and NIC settings
> and
> apache.conf entries. Name based means that you
> have one less
> item to worry about."
> 
> I don't understand this 50 IP VHosts per box
> ratio.  If this were the case it seems mIcrosOft
> would have made this a big issue.  I've never
> heard of this limitation.
> 
> Is this true or is his configuration wrong causing
> resource problems?

I've never had that many IP's on a machine, but it sounds like he
doesn't mean there is any kind of hard limit, but that it eventually
starts to affect performance.  It probably starts to affect Windows
performance, too.  And there's the maintenace issue of keeping all the
config files.  But you're doing DNS either way, although you don't
maintain the reverse lookup table for Virtual.
 
> 3) I understand that IP is better because the
> search
> engines will index the site more freely.  Is this
> true?

I don't know, but it's certainly possible.  If the index bots do reverse
lookups, or don't pass the hostname to the web server, they would be
affected.  I think the major search engines have figured out how to deal
with virtual hosts, but I don't know.
 
-BVG