What about wildcard DNS?

Post #335,809 by drook 11/16/10 1:44:44 PM Reply	What about wildcard DNS? http://www.iab.org/d...ns-wildcards.html I understood from setting up Apache that wildcard DNS was pretty standard for hosting multiple sites on a single server. The link above suggests that wildcard DNS is primarily only used for MX records. Who's right? -- Drew
Post #335,811 by folkert 11/16/10 1:59:55 PM Reply	Re: What about wildcard DNS? Content Delivery Networks use Wildcard DNS and a Wildcard SSL cert to deliver content over SSL. Look at the cloudfront.net setup. Typically a {14 character log36 name}.cloudfront.net something like: https://d36vh9gkg2fz...oudfront.net/home That is a wildcard DNS name being served by a vhost and the DNS name resolving to a batch of closely GeoLocated IP Addresses. greg@maxime:~/iso [6] $ dig d36vh9gkg2fzwi.cloudfront.net [snip] ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;d36vh9gkg2fzwi.cloudfront.net. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: d36vh9gkg2fzwi.cloudfront.net. 60 IN CNAME d36vh9gkg2fzwi.iad2.cloudfront.net. d36vh9gkg2fzwi.iad2.cloudfront.net. 60 IN A 216.137.33.140 d36vh9gkg2fzwi.iad2.cloudfront.net. 60 IN A 216.137.33.143 d36vh9gkg2fzwi.iad2.cloudfront.net. 60 IN A 216.137.33.165 d36vh9gkg2fzwi.iad2.cloudfront.net. 60 IN A 216.137.33.217 d36vh9gkg2fzwi.iad2.cloudfront.net. 60 IN A 216.137.33.245 d36vh9gkg2fzwi.iad2.cloudfront.net. 60 IN A 216.137.33.14 d36vh9gkg2fzwi.iad2.cloudfront.net. 60 IN A 216.137.33.47 d36vh9gkg2fzwi.iad2.cloudfront.net. 60 IN A 216.137.33.67 ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: iad2.cloudfront.net. 97099 IN NS ns-iad2-01.cloudfront.net. iad2.cloudfront.net. 97099 IN NS ns-iad2-02.cloudfront.net. [snip] Its just works right now. Since IE 7+ and most other browsers recognize Wildcard SSL certs... its simple now. A little background... since in 2003 Wildcard DNS was a fairly new concept and really wasn't treated very well by browsers or by anything and was pushed by Apache Software Foundation and MASS hosting providers... but really didn't matter for SMTP... smtp was the only well known services to be able to handle pattern based mail hosts and quite effectively in that regard... So, it makes sense its was thought of only for MX records.
Post #335,821 by drook 11/16/10 5:13:40 PM Reply	Didn't realize it was so recent When I read the Apache docs way back when, I got the impression it was pretty much SOP. Of course most of those docs were probably written by mass web hosts. Reason I need it is I'm trying to set up a WordPress multi-site instance. Partially as a long-term experiment, but also to learn how it works so I can pitch it to some potential clients. What would be really nice is if WP could handle both subdomain- and subdirectory-based hosting in one installation. -- Drew
Post #335,827 by folkert 11/16/10 6:00:31 PM Reply	Apache has supported it for a LONG time... but its was on the ASF and MASS providers that it fionally made it into DNS and browsers supporting wildcard SSL certs.
Post #335,813 by boxley 11/16/10 2:01:51 PM Reply	Re: What about wildcard DNS? For these reasons, almost all use of DNS wildcards has been limited to a relatively small number of reasonably well-understood roles, and most wildcard use has been limited to a single role: the MX records used in mail delivery. not only MX records, DKIM can use a wild card as well as apache. Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep

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