On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 8:31 AM, André Warnier <a...@ice-sa.com> wrote:

> Rex C. Eastbourne wrote:
> [...]
>
> A short primer :
>
> The Internet in general works with IP addresses, not host names.
> Host names are for humans.
>
> When in the browser of your workstation, you enter a URL like
> http://hostname.x.y.z/something/something-else.html
> the first thing the browser does is try to resolve the hostname
> "hostname.x.y.z" into an IP address.
> For that to work, there must be an entry somewhere in your local "hosts"
> file, or in a DNS server known to your workstation, that can "translate" the
> name "hostname.x.y.z" into an IP address.
> If that does not work, then your browser will tell you "host not found",
> before even trying to send a HTTP request to that host.
>
> Your webserver, no matter what is its configuration, will only get involved
> once it receives the browser request.
> According to your symptoms, that does not seem to be the case yet.


Thanks for the replies. I am working on a Slicehost server with a static IP
address; it looks something like 173.23.45.67. I'm able to navigate to this
IP address from any computer as if it were any other domain name. What I was
wondering is whether it's possible to navigate to a "subdomain" of an IP
address, so that "testing.173.23.45.67" and "production.173.23.45.67" would
be an actual valid websites. However, I am starting to get the feeling that
this might not be possible. I'll ask the owner of my Slicehost VPS to buy us
a domain name so that I can have "testing.mysite.com", etc. Hopefully that
will make this configuration easier.

Rex

Reply via email to