Re: server redirects by client domain

>From: Martin Hamilton <martin@mrrl.lut.ac.uk>
>
>I was just wondering whether there are any HTTP servers out there
>which let the server admin configure redirects based on the
>client's domain name.  This seems like a neat way to make browsers
>automatically use "nearby" mirror sites, without having to go
>round tweaking all the clients.  Obviously it would only be useful
>if you take the trouble to figure out the client's domain name
>
>e.g. to re-direct accesses to everything at http://www.apache.org/
>to an appropriate mirror site, you would want to put something like
>this in your server config
>
>  RedirectDomain / http://Bond.edu.au/External/Misc/apache/ .au .nz
>    .jp .kr .cn
>  RedirectDomain / http://iuinfo.tuwien.ac.at/apache/ .at .de .dk
>  RedirectDomain / http://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/web/apache/ .cz
>  RedirectDomain / http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/www/apache/ .pl
>  RedirectDomain / http://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/apache/ .uk
>    .fr .be
>
>(etc...!)
>
>If nobody else is working on this sort of thing, I might have a
>stab at hacking this into the NCSA and Apache servers

Whilst this may be the best that one can do with current protocols, it
seems to approach the problem from the angle.

Rather than trying to force the client to use the server that you think
would be best for it, it would seem better to provide data to allow the
client to choose.

i.e., the server could send out a Mirror: header containing a list of
alternate 'mirror' URLs for the resource requested. The client can then
select one of these based on knowledge of its local network. It could
also try them in turn, selecting the fastest.

 David Robinson.

Received on Wednesday, 20 December 1995 06:54:59 UTC