OctaGate Switch lets you place multiple web servers on the same IP. Traditionally, you
need one IP address per web server that is accessible from the outside. The only
way around that is placing web servers on different ports, but that opens up
several other problems, for instance, many firewalls only allow access on port
80. Many service providers only allow you one external IP.
Mapping Requests Per Domain
Using OctaGate Switch, you can easily map incoming requests to internal servers. For instance, the external (DNS)
address of www.Domain-A.com and www.Domain-B.com could be the same
external IP number, but internally, one could be routed an Apache
server, and the other routed to an Internet Information Server.
Web Mail and Web Server
If you want to run a web application like a web mail interface on your web server, you would to use a
port other than 80 on your web mail interface. With OctaGate Switch, both can listen on port 80 (the default HTTP
port) through OctaGate Switch, so you can access your web mail interface through any firewall! Your web site remains at www.domain.com and your web mail interface
gets a friendly URL like mail.domain.com, even if you only have one computer and or IP number.
Mapping Requests Per Path/Document
OctaGate Switch can also determine which internal web server to forward an HTTP request to, depending
on the path that is requested, or even which document is requested. For instance, if your regular web site contains
static pages, you may not wish to mix that with your active server pages, as a shopping site.
OctaGate Switch lets you easily forward those request to another server.
If you work with SOAP Web Services,
you can use OctaGate Switch to help with the maintenance of the soap servers. You can place
web services on multiple internal servers, even though it looks like one server from the
outside. See SOAP Web Services maintenance for more information.
