Can I configure the Windows hosts file to use IP address plus port?

Question

I want to configure the Windows hosts file to send host requests based on IP address + ports.

For example:

127.0.0.1:80       www.site1.com
127.0.0.1:8080     www.sitetwo.com

Because I have Apache listening on port 8080 and IIS on port 80 (default).

So, I think the best way to do this is to modify the hosts file. It's not affecting anything. Neither I am getting any error nor any message.

Answer 1

You can't. The hosts file is just that -- hosts. It's the equivalent of a "short-circuited" DNS within your local machine. DNS can't send you to ports, either.

To achieve what you're trying to do, you would want to set up virtual hosting under IIS or Apache, and use that (based on the HTTP Host: header) to let the service decide which site to present. This won't help you, though, if you want to be doing this with both IIS and Apache simultaneously.

Answer 2

No, you can't. If it's not working, then something else is going wrong.

127.0.0.1 site.com
127.0.0.1 www.site.com

I assume this is for a development box?

DNS will resolve site.com and www.site.com to localhost as long as you're not doing something like proxying your DNS queries. You should probably ask over at ServerFault for webserver configuration help, that's the most likely issue.

Answer 3

As with the other answers host file doesn't have port information but you can have a page that redirects biased upon the header like apache or IIS would do for name based virtual hosting. Check the header and redirect as needed. However I don't really see the value in this as you are reinventing the wheel. Apache supports port based virtual hosting and I assume that iis does.

Is your goal to have a development machine with both running our is this for a production situation.

Answer 4

You can do that with Fiddler. With Fiddler script, you can many amazing things.

If you set hosts like this

127.0.0.1     www.site1.com    # Port 80
127.0.0.1     www.sitetwo.com  # Port 8080

Add this in CustomRules.js(to open CustomRules.js, choose Customize Rules on Fiddler's Rules menu)

// this method is already exist
static function OnBeforeRequest(oSession: Session) {  
    if (oSession.host.toLowerCase() == "www.sitetwo.com") 
        oSession.host = "www.sitetwo.com:8080";
    ...
}

Then Fiddler convert the host, and you'll connect to port 8080.