We are a few web developers and currently edit our host file to point domain names to the local web server but this is becoming hard as number of clients are increasing and we need to continuously change each host file of computers.
What do you think is the best possible solution for us, use a proxy server or a dns server, and could you possibly tell me how to fix this problem?
Thanks in advance
I would use a DNS server, or use mDNS, on your LAN. Then an administrator can simply add an A or CNAME entry to the zone, and all the computers on the LAN will see that record.
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I developed an asp.net (2.0) intranet Application for local network in an organisation..
so we have 10 systems every one should access that site by ://192.xxx.x.xx/xyz(website name) ...
so now their requirement is not to type total ip adress.they need just by typing ://xyz they have to browse the intranet application..how to solve this issue..?
Thanks
Veduru
Go to every one of this 10 computers, and in this directory
c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\
find the host file and add the conversion of ip to name as
192.168.1.10 xyz
etc
and then you can access the site as http://xyz
Talk to your network admin about setting up a DNS entry for your application in the local DNS server. If you have multiple web sites running on your web server, look into configuring IIS host headers to ensure the users get directed to the proper web application.
Please do not manually edit the hosts file on each machine unless it is absolutely, positively necessary, and only do so as a last resort. When your 10-machine application expands to 100, or if your server IP ever changes, you will thank me later :)
I am currently building an web app which also utilizes websockets. (Rails for webserver and Nodejs for socket.io)
I have structured my application to use subdomains to separate between connection to the Nodejs server and the Rails webserver. I have "socket.mysite.com" redirected to the Node server and everything else to the webserver.
I am able to test this functionality on localhost. I simply modified my /etc/hosts to include the following:
127.0.0.1 socket.mysite.com
127.0.0.1 mysite.com
I know that on production I simply have to generate a CNAME record for socket.mysite.com and this will also work on my users' computers.
However, I am accustomed to testing my application by passing an IP address around. My team typically set up the server on our own machines and do development. When we want to test our individual servers, we just pass around an IP like "http://123.45.123.45".
With the new subdomain hack, this is no longer possible without modifying each of my tester's /etc/hosts. I honestly don't expect my testers to modify their /etc/hosts on the spot. What I can do is have each member of my team have their own domain and create the appropriate CNAME records for each individual team member.
Is there an easier way to allow me to run my app on an IP and just pass that IP around?
It sounds like your needs have scaled beyond the days of just simply editing a host file. While you could continue to have everyone on your team continue to edit host files, there are two main risks that I see here:
For your idea to just use IP Addresses, you risk missing something in testing that you wouldn't see unless you were on production, as the issue may be dependent on something in the domain configuration.
For using host entries, you introduce a lot of complexity and unnecessary changes to each developer and tester's configuration, which of course leaves the door open for mistakes, and it also takes time that will add-up over the long term.
Setting up a DNS server may be helpful in your case. You could map a set of domains for each developer that match a certain pattern so that your application will still run correctly. This would allow you to share the URLS without having to constantly reconfigure each person's computer. Additionally, marketing and sales stakeholders can easily view product demos as well, without needing to learn what the elusive host file is for.
If you have an IT department, they can help you setup the DNS. However, if you are a small team without a real IT department, some users have found success using DNS systems designed for home or small office networks.
My client has a website that is showing some strange behavior. The site is built in ASP.Net and used to be hosted on their internal network. It's now been moved to a different server outside their network. They have other sites hosted on the same server, some built using DotNetNuke, and some classic ASP. All these sites are hosted on one application server, with a database (SQL Server 2008) on a separate server (which is on the same network as the application server). They share the application server, and the database server.
Now that this site has been moved to the outside server, they can't access it. I can, and so can others that I work with (from different IPs, across the country). But the client can't from their network. They can access the landing page subsite.clientdomain.com (no db access), but nothing else. So, for instance, there's a link to subsite.clientdomain.com/folder. When they click that link, the URL changes to subsite.com/folder, which does not work. For myself and others not at the client site, the URL does not change and opens with no problems.
I didn't write the site, and didn't even know it existed before this problem cropped up, so I know very little more than this. Any help is appreciated.
I'm going to go with Martijn B's answer. There's a DNS issue on the internal network. Somewhere on of the DNS servers is a definition that maps http://companywebsite to an ip address like 192.168.1.20 or whatever.
I would open a command prompt on your PC and type
ping new_website_name.com
Take a look at the IP address that comes back. You can also do an nslookup on new_website_name.com that will give you more information. If you (person A) gets one IP address and Person B (inside the network) gets a different IP address....there is definitely a DNS issue on the internal network.
You're going to have to do some network tracing to determine exactly where any redirection is occurring. Given that the problem is only manifested in certain locations, it is likely that it is a function of network configuration in that location (as previously suggested). Without understanding exactly what redirection is occurring, it would be unwise to make configuration changes that might make the problem worse or introduce new issues.
A DNS server cannot AFAIK redirect to a different URL. So something is redirecting from subsite.clientdomain.com/folder to subsite.com/folder, which could be caused by a HTTP redirect. This can be triggered by the software/website itself or by IIS.
I would like to configure IIS server at (Windows server 2003) for domain name mapping.
We have purchased domain name for one of our newly created website.
I would like to know how can I configure IIS so that anybody from outside world can reach website by typing URL.
As in: http://example.com/ should redirect to my the home page of my website.
I have made website in using ASP.NET and Oracle.
How can I do this?
You need to register your domain on a DNS server, which is different (though could be the same physical box) as your IIS server. Long time since I've done this myself, as I use a hosting company for this kind of thing, but you will typically need at least two DNS Server IP addresses typically for a domain (primary and secondary DNS servers). There is a DNS Server for the windows server platform, but most people use hosting services to do this thing.
By the way, you might get a better response posting this kind of question on serverfault.com, as it's not really a developer question.
How to efficiently create subdomains dynamically that are resolved to different IP than the original domain?
Most dynamic subdomain creation solutions I've found here would add a *.domain.com A-record to the DNS server (usually using BIND), but that's not what I want.
Does that mean the zone file needs to be set to always Expire? Wouldn't that tax our DNS server heavily?
However, what if the client ISP doesn't go and fetch the new zone file I just dynamically changed? Wouldn't they not able to resolve our new sub-domain entry?
Would setting up DDNS in BIND be the logical path for implementing such system? DDNS would allow me dynamically insert A-record without restarting BIND, right?
I'm sure there are some way to do this, since most large blogging service that doesn't point all account to the same IP as the blogging engine, are doing something similar to what I need.
Thank you!
Yes, you could use dynamic DNS updates to push zone file changes into your zone without having to put them into a text zone file and reloading BIND each time.
Many large domain name registries use exactly that technique whenever a domain name is registered.
That doesn't mean, though, that it's the right technique for your application. As recommended yesterday to your other question, there's really no reason not to go with the wildcard option.
A low-end server running Apache would be more than enough to front-end reverse proxy your first few thousand sites, and better still you don't even need to deploy it until you get enough users to set up your second partitioned cluster.
I would imagine that most services that do this have their wildcard (*.) DNS entry setup for these accounts, and probabley point it to a load balancer, that distributes requests based on host name etc. They then have the non-standard entrys setup as normal A records in DNS.