Multi-Homed Server Configuration

A web server that is connected to more than one physical network is called a multi-homed server. Such a server has more than one IP address. If it does, the system needs to know which address it should listen to for incoming server requests. There are two configuration options to handle this:

BindAddress Tells httpd which address should be used for server interactions. The default value is *, which means that the server should respond to web service requests addressed to any of its valid IP addresses. If a specific address is used on the BindAddress command line, only requests addressed to that address are honored. BindAddress is not explicitly set in the Red Hat configuration.

Listen Tells httpd which additional addresses and ports should be monitored for web service requests. Address and port pairs are separated by a colon. For example, to monitor port 8080 on IP address 172.16.64.52, enter 172.16.64.52:8080. If a port is entered with no address, the address of the server is used. If the Listen directive is not used, httpd monitors only the port defined by the Port directive. The Red Hat configuration only uses the Listen directive to provide SSL support. In that case, it sets the standard port to 80, and sets the SSL port to 443.