virtual hosting

🏠 What is Virtual Hosting?

Virtual hosting is a technique used by web servers (like Apache, Nginx) to host multiple websites on a single IP address.

There are two main types:

1. IP-based virtual hosting – one IP per website.

2. Name-based virtual hosting – multiple websites share the same IP, but are distinguished by domain name.

🌐 What is Name-Based Virtual Hosting?

With name-based virtual hosting, a single web server (on one IP) can serve many websites by checking the “Host” header in the HTTP request.

📦 Example:

Imagine the server 192.168.1.10 hosts two websites:

• blog.example.com
• shop.example.com

When you visit http://blog.example.com, your browser sends:

GET / HTTP/1.1   
Host: blog.example.com

The server sees the Host header and knows which site to serve — even though both domains point to the same IP.