DNS & Hosting multiple sites with 1 IP adress

[xanadumoon]

Hello,

A friend wants me to arrange his computer so he can host
multiple sites with 1 IP adress. He has already 5 IP
adresses & 5 registered domain names which are mapped to
each other. Now, do I have to contact the place he bought
the domain names and tell them to remap those 5 names to a
single IP adress, or can I handle this by setting up DNS
on the client's Windows 200 machine and create mappings
here? Or is there another alternative easier way?

Thanks

 

[xanadumoon]

Hello Herb,

First of all thanks a lot for your quick response, that is
really so kind of you.

And another question, just to be sure, let's say that I
have contacted the DNS admin and told him to route all of
the 5 domain names to a single IP adress. And afterwords I
had setup the host headers in the IIS for each site. Is
this all I have to do? Are there any other imortant things
to setup as well? And a final question, under a single IP
adress how many sites should I host maximum? What is the
safest number?

Thanks

 

[Herb Martin]

First of all thanks a lot for your quick response, that is

really so kind of you.

You are welcome.

And another question, just to be sure, let's say that I
have contacted the DNS admin and told him to route all of
the 5 domain names to a single IP adress.

Yes, but let's not say "route" -- that is used for another
techical context and makes it sound like we might be
confused -- let's say "tell the DNS admin to delegate
(or even 'POINT') all of the records..."

And afterwords I
had setup the host headers in the IIS for each site. Is
this all I have to do?

If it was working before, this SHOULD be all.
Note that some other people may have the OLD addresses
from the nameserver in "cache" for up to the TTL time setting.

Are there any other imortant things
to setup as well? And a final question, under a single IP
adress how many sites should I host maximum? What is the
safest number?

As long as you have Disk Space, CPU power, and network
bandwidth it can be very large.

Note that a big web site like Amazon is run separately --
actually it's probably duplicated on many servers for
performance reasons.

If you sold "cheap $5 per month small 5 Meg websites"
to others, you might handle hundreds or even thousands
IF they don't get much access. If no one is downloading
from it, then an extra website is pretty cheap on reasources.

 

[DJ]

you can also try different ports for different sites

 

[Herb Martin]

you can also try different ports for different sites

Yes, I ommitted that purposely because one it is not
general purpose and two it offers little help to just say
"use port numbers to differentiate sites" without explaining
all the necessary setup and glue it takes to make it practical.

It's not general purpose because now every user must either
visit the "additional web sites on unusual ports" by explicitly
TYPING the port number in the URL, or by following links
from other pages that embed that information.

Since browser default to the, er., default port 80, it takes
special effort to use port 8000-8001 for the other 4 sites.