Web
Web surfing consists of a client browser (netscape, IE, etc) requesting a page of information from a server (a web server).We run a web server (http://www.earth.monash.edu.au) that provides the department a web site that is surfable from outside the university.
We also have to surf other people's web sites and this is achieved by the use of our proxy server. Direct outgoing web surfing is blocked by ITS to force people to use their proxy service, but we run our own proxy service which insulates people from authcate and ITS as much as possible.
Our web server
Our web server (standard apache), currently runs on the host orion.earth.monash.edu.au (also known as www.earth.monash.edu.au).The apache program takes a request for a page and returns it to the requestor.
Things to know about our web server:
- User directories are in WWW (note capitals) in the user's directory.
- ZPublisher is the module used to generate cgi's with python.
Changes soon....
Very soon the web service will be moved from orion to neo and the disk migrated from /sci1/WWW* on orion to /Mount/www on neo.Our proxy server
The proxy server takes local requests for web pages (eg http://cnn.com/) and fetches the page, storing a local copy whenever possible, so that any future reference is supplied from the local disk. There is a protocol that makes sure that any page is uptodate (although using shift-reload in netscape will force a reload of the page.We have to use a proxy service somewhere inside monash because ITS block outgoing connections to port 80 to force people to use their proxy. Our proxy passes on normal requests directly to their proxy farm (if the requests arent local that is).
Things you should know about our proxy server:
- Our proxy is configured to pass its requests into the ITS proxy farm if they are not local.
- Any local machine can access our own web pages without the proxy service.
- The proxy server is needed for any network outside the earth science if your machine is on the 169 network.
- There are two proxy servers, but their use is (usually) controlled by a proxy.pac file.
Currently the two servers are running on:
- proxy (130.194.168.4) which is the backup server running on 100Mb/s ITS network.
- proxy1 (130.194.168.1) which is the main server running on 100Mb/s earth network (but choked through a 10Mb/s external ITS link).
Normally the proxy.pac's send requests to the proxy machine first and then fall back to proxy1 if proxy fails to respond.
Files...
Config files for the web services