IP assignment for virtual webhosting

On Thu, 11 May 2000, Javier Llopis wrote:

> there is no HTTP 1.1 equivalent for POP. So we end up with 99% of our 
> domains having a different IP address each, in which case who _cares_ 
> if we also use that IP address for the web server? 
> 
> Are we really wasting IP address space?
> 
> Hasn't anybody run into this situation? If so, how are you dealing 
> with it?

Use one big POP3 server for all of your customers, and either use
"standardized" pop-login names (ie, customercorp01, customercorp02,
othercorp 01, othercorp02, etc) and entries in the alias file to point to
them. It even makes sense to point mail.customerdomain.com as a cname to
your mail.provider.whatever so that if there's a change you don't have to
reconfigure all MUA's.

As for ftp, it's easily solved by creating different home directories for
different logins (don't forget to chroot them). So your customers will not
get their own hostname in the login prompt, no big deal.... ;-)



Nils



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