DNS setup for one domain with HTTP on one IP and HTTPS on a second IP

Question

Regarding DNS records, how do I setup one domain, www.example.com, which has HTTP for www on 1.1.1.1 and HTTPS for www on 2.2.2.2?

For clarity:

• HTTP www.example.com resolves to 1.1.1.1
• HTTPS www.example.com resolves to 2.2.2.2

Currently I have:

@   IN A 1.1.1.1
www IN A 1.1.1.1

My current (average) knowledge of DNS records is suggesting that I'm not going to be able to set it up that way. Instead I'll have to create a new a-record to something like secure IN A 2.2.2.2.

Note: Setting HTTPS www.example.com on 1.1.1.1 is not an option, unfortunately.

Solution 1

I'm afraid you cannot do what you are asking directly unless you want HTTPS traffic to go to e.g. secure.example.com instead of www.example.com.

The only solution would be to put a proxy/firewall/load balancer device in front of your webservers that forwarded on traffic to the different IP addresses based on the protocol used.

Solution 2

There's no way to perform this with DNS, as you have to have one IP address for a given NAME, irrespective of the protocol the options available to you are:

• Use a firewall/router to route the traffic accordingly to different servers.
• Add a new record for, for example, secure.example.com as 2.2.2.2, configure the server hosting 1.1.1.1 to redirect any HTTPS requests for www.example.com to secure.example.com