Question

I am not a DNS expert, but I was told something today that does not seem possible. Can someone explain how to do this or back me up when I say it cannot be done.

I have a client that has a .gov website. Eventually the application I am developing will be moved to their environment. We currently have it on our servers because we are only 75% finished. However, they want the URL to be for their website now.

Their IT guy said they could setup a DNS entry on their side. Something like this:

http://www.TheirOrg.gov/MyApp

Which would basically redirect to out site which is currently IP address for the site. We currently have the website located at:

Ex: http://www.MyOrg.gov/MyApp

They want us to create “A FULL ON” (their words) alias. So that after the redirect, the URL in the browser will still say the original URL.
When users are using the application on our server, they want they URL to start with “www.TheirOrg.gov/MyApp”.

Can someone point me to how this done?

Thanks

Answer 1

If they wanted to have the address be http://MyApp.TheirOrg.gov, you could do that with just a dns record. Otherwise, what they’re asking is basically impossible, because DNS has nothing to do with anything that comes after the domain portion of the url.

Edit: I thought of a work-around in case they’re stubborn: If you have access to their web server, you could create a page at http://www.TheirOrg.gov/MyApp that just has an <iFrame> pointing at your development site. Probably a lot of browsers would detect this as suspicious behavior, though.