Port Sharing Question

[goobee]

Is there any way to share a port with 2 http servers or am I out of luck? I only have 1 IP and my domain points to that single domain.

 

[Lord Evermore]

There's no way to have a router forward port 80 to two different machines, no. However you could have your domain be redirected to a different port on your IP address, with one server using port 80 and another using some other port. Or if you don't mind users needing to specify a port in the URL, you can just change the port on one machine and forward it from the router, and not have to change the domain setup at all.

Another option is to set up virtual hosting on a single machine. That way all traffic goes to port 80 and goes to the one machine, which then serves up webpages based on which domain name was referenced.

 

[goobee]

Only problem is that I have run 2 separate http servers. One is the web server and the other is an e-mail server which serves a http web mail interface. I don't think virtual hosting would help. 🙁

 

[Fuzznuts]

you could set up a virtual host that redirects straigtht to the 2nd machine say www.xxx.com redirects to www.xxx.com:8888 that way you can forward in two different ports but externally users can still use www.xxx.com.

does that make sense?

 

[Lord Evermore]

How would he have a virtual host that the users use the same domain name for both? How does the server know when to redirect to the mail server? Having a port redirect in place for the domain isn't the same thing as a virtual hosting setup. Virtual hosting means a single web server running with a single IP receives the traffic, and displays the website based on which domain name was reached. Each domain name is different, not just a domain with a different port on it. (A separate site could maybe be run on a different port on the same machine, but that would still be considered 2 servers, not virtual hosting.) Using the same domain with just different ports to reach two servers would require users to specify the port in the URL they type in.

After seeing the response, it sounds like you're trying to use a single domain, but you want two websites to be visible, one the main page and the other a webmail service. This should be easy to set up, a couple of ways.

A single web server can serve the main domain as well as a subdomain. If your domain is goobee.com, then www.goobee.com would be your main site, and webmail.goobee.com would be the subdomain where your webmail configuration is. Only one server needed, and no need to be concerned with ports. Unless you're running some heavy traffic, a single machine should be able to deal with both parts of the site.

The other option would be to set up the subdomain with a redirect to another port (this would be done through whoever maintains your DNS records for the domain, probably your domain registrar). The users who try to reach webmail.goobee.com wouldn't have to worry about the ports, they'd be automatically sent to the particular port you specify, and the web browser wouldn't care. That way you can still maintain two separate servers -- your router (presuming you are using a router, which you'll need to do with only one IP and two computers) just needs to be configured to forward port 80 to the web server, and whatever other port you chose goes to the mail server.

 

[goobee]

The redirect sounds to be the easiest solution. I'll work on it from that perspective. Thanks for all the responses.