Tracing a redirected website

switlikbob · July 16th, 2002, 10:26 AM

Hello all...does anyone know how to get the real IP of a redirected web address? Say I ping a url and get an ip address back, then I try to http to that ip address, and I get nothing...it must be a redirected site, right? Any help would be appreciated, I tried nslookup, but htat didn't help any...TIA

gothic · July 16th, 2002, 12:24 PM

Not exactly. It could be doing Host Header Redirects... Where the IP address can have more than one website sitting on it.
For example, I have six seperate websites on my one IP address for my server.

Though, if it is a redirect, you could telnet to port 80 and issue the GET commands manually.. =]

switlikbob · July 16th, 2002, 12:35 PM

I can't even get a reply to the address when I ping it...it just resolves the name to an IP...the ip address does not seem to be alive, but the site works...any suggestions?

gothic · July 16th, 2002, 04:01 PM

They are probably filtering ICMPs (Ping, etc). A lot of larger (And many smaller) hosting firms will do that. Don't be discouraged.

You may also try a traceroute. Some places don't filter that out.

switlikbob · July 16th, 2002, 04:41 PM

I tried that too...no dice...this one has me baffled...I guess I'll have to do some reading on DNS and current hosting practices to figure this one out...

psyklone · July 23rd, 2002, 11:11 PM

i'm curious what you're trying to do in the first place, it seems to me that if it was a server that you should be accessing then you would be able to. now, that aside, just because you are able to resolve a name to an ip address doesn't mean that the server is up and active at the time. that just means that there's a dns record for that name. also as gothic said, it's not uncommon for businesses and people that has control of their routers to allow outbound pings but will block echo replys in response to an external ping.

switlikbob · July 24th, 2002, 09:46 AM

OK, since you are so curious, here is exactly what I am trying to do: Find the real identity (IP address) of a web server. LIke I said before, the resolved IP is not hosting the web site. It is being redirected...I just want to know where to...it's not some big secret or anything...and to be honest, nobody has even come close to telling me how I would go about tracing this...I type in a URL...I get sent to a website...when I nslookup and get an IP address, I CANNOT type in HTTP://192.x.x.x and get to the website...so it must be redirected to another IP....HOW DO I FIND THAT IP??? THat's all I want to know...I hope I made myself a bit clearer...TIA

DVNT1 · July 24th, 2002, 10:47 AM

Quote:

I CANNOT type in HTTP://192.x.x.x and get to the website...so it must be redirected to another IP....

That isn't true because some webservers can be configured to serve web pages based on IP and host header information. Without the host header information a "default" website is usually served, but in this case it may not be a working website.

You communicate to the website by its IP address and, frequently, host header information. So the IP you get when looking it up is the actual IP address for most purposes. That IP address could be working with NAT (private or public addresses) and you (probably) will never know it.

psyklone · July 24th, 2002, 05:05 PM

exactly ...

gothic · July 24th, 2002, 05:44 PM

I'm pretty sure I already said the same thing previously.. =]