DNS – How to Redirect XMPP with DNS

dns-serverdomain-name-systemxmpp

Is it possible to redirect XMPP using DNS records?

I have a domain hosted on a shared host that does not have Jabber support. If possible, I'd like to still have XMPP on this domain, but have it connect to another IP (configured to support the first domain) without user intervention. I'm using ejabberd on the second server, if that helps.

Best Answer

You need SRV records, e.g.

_jabber._tcp.example.com.       IN SRV   0 0 5269   xmpp.example.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.example.com.  IN SRV   0 0 5269   xmpp.example.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.example.com.  IN SRV   0 0 5222   xmpp.example.com.

(Adjust the port numbers and domain names to suit).

XMPP clients should automatically look these up, and if found connect to the specified host name instead of whatever host the main domain itself resolves to.

Related Solutions

Load balance xmpp traffic to multiple nodes in the backend

I suggest the use of DNS-based load balancing. By defining multiple SRV records, not only you achieve load balancing, but this can be distributed as you wish (for example you may want 60% of the load on a server with higher capacity, and the remaining to a smaller one), but you can also define failover servers.

An SRV query for an XMPP server like ejabberd may look like: -xmpp_client._tcp.yourdomain

Domain – How to redirect domain A to domain B using A-Records and CNAME records only

So you are not looking at redirection as such (as that happens at the app level, i.e. on Apache/Nginx/wherever) but rather on the DNS resolution. The host on which DomainA is hosted will or should never be hit, based on your description as you want the DNS requests to be resolved to the IPs of DomainB. Unless I'm missing something in your request?

As Shane pointed out DNS is not capable of HTTP redirection - that's an application/webserver duty. You could make DomainA and DomainB resolve to the same IP on DNS and all would work. But if you're looking to do this on per URL/per-path way then this is not possible - DNS is not capable of that - it's a simple DNS->IP service, what's happening with the actual URL is the webserver's task.

After the comment below, what I'd do is to refer all DNS records for DomainA to the same IP(s) as DomainB is pointed to - this way you will get HTTP request hitting hostB and then it's just a simple matter of:

creating a particular Apache Name Baseed Virtual host - which will be serving files from its own DocumentRoot
creating permanent redirect on Apache like this:

This will rewrite anything coming to DomainB to DomainA which can be hosted on the same server or somewhere else. I appreciate that the second option is probably an overhead and not necessary if you can/are allowed to create Name Based Virtual hosts on apache.

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName DomainB
  Redirect permanent / http://DomainA/
</VirtualHost>

I'd go with 1. - point all DNS records of DomainA to the same IP(s) as DomainB is pointing and create particular Name Based VirtualHosts on Apache.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Load balance xmpp traffic to multiple nodes in the backend

Domain – How to redirect domain A to domain B using A-Records and CNAME records only

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