Forum Moderators: phranque
"But wait, I have this great deal with my hosting company, or I have set up my great datacenter! Now you are telling me simply because I cover Elbonia with a site I need to get hosting in Elbonia?"
And this is where my proxying idea comes in! Wouldn't it be possible - as an alternative to hosting - to simply use the proxying feature of Apache? So the Apache in Elbonia prxies every request for www.elbonia-widgets.com to www.mydatacenter.com/elbonia. For visitors (and Search Engine Spiders) the content is hosted in Elbonia. But physically it gets served from elsewhere.
Does it work? Does anybody use it? Can it be tracked?
Can it be tracked? Well, probably not -- at least not from the client end. The main 'tracking' problem is that you'll need to modify your logs and stats on the 'real' server to get the actual requestor's IP address, since otherwise, all requests to the 'real' server will appear to originate at the proxy.
Also, all requests to the 'real' server from the proxy's locale will have to pass through the proxy -- both ways, so there is a (usually-small) performance consideration, as well as a significant reliability consideration; Given equally-reliable servers, adding the proxy reduces the overall system reliability by 50%. Adding in the back-end transport (from proxy to actual server) lowers it further.
I suspect you'll end up paying as much for a localized server usable as a proxy as you would if you just set up that local server as a mirror of your main site. But if you try this, please let us know how it works for you!
Jim
I suspect you'll end up paying as much for a localized server usable as a proxy as you would if you just set up that local server as a mirror of your main site.
It's a thought experiment - for now. But this concept would actually be perfect for a mutual exchange. You probably won't see this type of setup at one of the huge mass-hosters. But it can be done on a mutual basis by webmaster colleagues, or as a service from niche providers.
I haven't thought about the logging issue though...
The trick is to use a custom log config and replace REMOTE_ADDR entries with HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR or CLIENT_IP or similar -- I don't remember exactly which one the proxy Apache will pass to you. It should be pretty simple.
Since your stats will run off those logs, I don't think a stats change is needed.
That leaves reliability as the major concern.
Jim
