Shared IP and DNS question

Wings_of_Ambition

Hello all,

I have my own website, but am a bit of a (complete!) novice at it all, so wanted to check my understanding on something.

I have a domain registered with 123-reg and a hosting package with Ariotek (previously Fuzioned). I use the cpanel program to log in to Ariotek, and it says I have a shared IP. When I enter the IP into my browser address bar, it takes me to a generic page explaining that whoever manage the server have cpanel installed. So far I follow this. I had a quick look at wikipedia, and it says that:

"When a web browser requests a resource from a web server using HTTP/1.1 it includes the requested hostname as part of the request. The server uses this information to determine which web site to show the user."

Does this mean that, when someone types my domain into their address bar, 123-reg will redirect them to the shared IP using the DNS nameservers I provided, and their browser will then 'tell' the Ariotek site the requested domain name (i.e. mydomain.co.uk), so it knows which part of its server to look at, to be able show my data?

I've probably made it seem more confusing than it really is... that's if I've even got it right! So, have I?

kwikbreaks

Wings_of_Ambition wrote: »

Does this mean that, when someone types my domain into their address bar, 123-reg will redirect them to the shared IP using the DNS nameservers I provided, and their browser will then 'tell' the Ariotek site the requested domain name (i.e. mydomain.co.uk), so it knows which part of its server to look at, to be able show my data?

In a word yes.

davb

Yes, but 123-reg will most likely never see the request. Once you have updated the DNS on 123-reg to point to Ariotek, then it will pass that info on, and the DNS servers all over the web will get updated with the new info.

mr_fishbulb

Wings_of_Ambition wrote: »

Does this mean that, when someone types my domain into their address bar, 123-reg will redirect them to the shared IP using the DNS nameservers I provided, and their browser will then 'tell' the Ariotek site the requested domain name (i.e. mydomain.co.uk), so it knows which part of its server to look at, to be able show my data?

If I were to type in your url (e.g. https://www.yourdomain.com), this would happen (in the background):

I would query my DNS provider to find out the IP address of https://www.yourdomain.com. It would come back with the shared IP address of your webserver.

I would send a HTTP GET request to the IP address. The request would start off like this:

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: https://www.yourdomain.com

It is the HOST part in the header that tells your webserver which of the sites I am after.

This is a feature of the HTTP protocol 1.1 which was not available in 1.0

kwikbreaks

davb wrote: »

Yes, but 123-reg will most likely never see the request. Once you have updated the DNS on 123-reg to point to Ariotek, then it will pass that info on, and the DNS servers all over the web will get updated with the new info.

You can use the 123 DNS servers. This lets you retain full control over the entries which may not be the case is you use the host DNS servers (and some hosts don't provide DNS)