RE: Domain Name Completion?

On Mon, 13 Oct 1997, Larmour, Jonathan wrote:

> From: Oskar Pearson
> Sent: 13 October 1997 09:15
> To: Stephan Jaeger
> Cc: squid-users@nlanr.net
> Subject: Re: Domain Name Completion?
> > Before using squid, our customers could type an URL like this
> > apple
> > to be completed to
> > http://www.apple.com
[...]
> I think the way Netscape does this is by a default auto-proxy script -
> it can be used for more than proxies as its just a javascript that's
> run for every URL. I haven't looked at this though.

I doubt it's done using JavaScript as I recall this "feature" was
available in pre-JavaScript versions (unless the old SIMMs are starting to
fail).

Basically, Netscape's browser does all manner of things differently
depending on various situations - for example:

* "completions" such as "apple" becoming "www.apple.com" are not done
  if Netscape decides the request should go via a proxy in the first
  instance; and,

* domain names are (or at least, were) treated in a case sensitive manner
  rather than case insensitive - that is, if you told Navigator not to
  proxy "uws.edu.au" requests, then it would still decide that
  "uws.EDU.AU" had to go via the proxy server.

What's probably happening (my turn to speculate) is Navigator saying:

* Should I go via the proxy for "apple"? No. Okay, try going direct.
  Oops, DNS lookup failed.

* Okay, try again - this time, try a lookup for "www.apple.com". Bingo,
  we got a response. (This could involve multiple attempts, as per the
  prefix and suffix guessing done by the Lynx browser.)

If you have proxies setup, though:

* Should I go via the proxy for "apple"? Yes. Fine, pass the request
  on to the proxy server verbatim and let the proxy handle the lookup
  (as I recall, Squid does a similar thing when it passes requests on to
  a parent - it lets the parent do the DNS lookup).

> Writing your own autoproxy script to behave in the same way might do it.

Probably - and/or using the redirector in front of Squid.

Cheers..

dave
Received on Mon Oct 13 1997 - 07:37:11 MDT