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I've been struggling with some routing problem for a while now, and can't seem to get any way with it.

My setup:

  • Windows Server 2008
  • 1 NIC w/ 2 IP addresses
  • VirtualBox VM, w/ Ubuntu Server (LAMP config)

I would like to route all traffic on a specific domainname @ port 80, to my VirtualBox VM. Seems like port 80 is already catched by IIS 7.5 (WIndows), so the call never gets to my VM. However; I did manage to get it work using a non-default port like :8080 , but that's not gonna do it for me.

If this isn't possible; Can I route all traffic on IP-address # 2 instead?

How can this be done?

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Why are you using Virtualbox on Windows Server 2008? – MDMarra May 11 '12 at 13:56

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I would like to route all traffic on a specific domain name @ port 80

An education is in order - you can not do that. When the TCP connection is established, there is no domain name involved, only an IP address.

Virtual hosts distinguish by host header which is part of the HTTP request, but that can only be sent AFTER (!) the connection on the TCP level is established.

A router thus has no base to determine what the requested domain is, ergo it can not sue that.

Your best bet is a reverse proxy. IIS is totally able to do that (at last on 2008 R2).

YOu need the Application Request Routing module:

http://www.iis.net/download/ApplicationRequestRouting

THen you can tell IIS to forward calls for a specific domain to another server.

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Thanks for your answer TomTom! Will using IIS as such an reverse proxy have any performance impact on the server or website ? – MikalBen May 11 '12 at 10:45
It will add some small latency and obviously processing overhead. But any solution will -and I doubt, if you run that in the way oyou describe - that you are a high scale website to start with. Try it out. – TomTom May 11 '12 at 12:29
hehe - true! :-) – MikalBen May 11 '12 at 12:54

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