Configuring redirection addresses when using a proxy server

You may need to configure redirection addresses if clients connect to your server through a proxy or firewall, or if you want the domain name set in cookies that are returned to the client.

Some HTTP requests may cause EAServer to redirect the client to a different page. For example, when a client requests a page that has access constraints, the user may be redirected to the login page. The HTTP redirect response code contains a fully qualified HTTP or HTTPS URL, including the protocol, host, and port. When clients connect through a proxy server, the redirection URL must be modified to specify the proxy host address rather than the EAServer host address. Some proxies do not filter any packets in the base protocol. A hardware SSL engine is one such example. When using these proxies, you must configure the properties below to ensure that the proxy address and protocol appear in the redirection URL, rather than the address used for the connection from the proxy to EAServer:

Using the Web server redirector When you are using the EAServer Web server redirector, you need not set these properties. The redirector automatically modifies the HTTP Location response header value, provided the host and port in the value match an EAServer that the redirector is configured to service. If you do set the proxy properties, the redirector does not modify the HTTP Location response header value.

Domain Name If this property is set, EAServer composes redirection URLs using the specified host or domain name rather than the host name set in the EAServer listener. The domain name is also set for cookies that are returned to the client. This allows sharing of cookie information across multiple servers in your domain. If the domain name is not set for the cookie, the information is available only to applications running on the server where it was created.

There are two ways to set the property:

If you specify a domain name beginning with a dot, the redirection host is “www” at the specified domain. For example, if you enter .foo.com and EAServer runs on host abc, the redirection host is www.foo.com, rather than abc.foo.com. Use this format if your proxy or firewall server runs with host name “www.”
If you specify a value that does not begin with a dot, the redirection host is the supplied value, with no domain name appended. In this case, enter either an IP address, or the entire address, including the domain name. For example, search.foo.com or 10.22.241.101. Use the full name if clients do not connect through a proxy, or connect through a proxy with a host name other than “www.”

When a domain name is specified, the address used in the location header for redirect response packets is composed as follows:

protocol://address:port

where:

protocol is the value of the Proxy Protocol setting, or if not set, the protocol of the original request from the proxy to EAServer, which may not match the protocol used by the base client’s connection to the proxy.
address is the value of the Domain Name setting if the setting does not begin with a dot; otherwise, address is the Domain Name setting with “www” inserted at the beginning.
port, for HTTP URLs, is the value of the Proxy HTTP Port setting, or 80 if not set. For HTTPS URLs, port is the value of the Proxy HTTPS Port setting, or 443 if not set.

To override the Domain Name for Web applications, you can set the com.sybase.jaguar.webapplication.httpdomain.override property to true. See Web application properties for a description of this property.

Proxy Protocol When a domain name is specified, the protocol for redirection URLs. Specify HTTP or HTTPS. If not set, the protocol matches that of the request sent from the proxy to EAServer. This may not match the original protocol. For example, the client may use HTTPS to connect to the proxy, which uses HTTP to connect to EAServer. In this case, you must set the Proxy Protocol to HTTPS. Otherwise, the client Web browser may refuse to connect to the redirected URL because of the switch from HTTPS to HTTP.

Proxy HTTP Port When a domain name is specified, this setting specifies the port to embed in HTTP redirection URLs. The default is 80. When a domain name is not specified, this setting is ignored.

Proxy HTTPS Port When a domain name is specified, this setting specifies the port to embed in HTTPS redirection URLs. The default is 443. When a domain name is not specified, this setting is ignored.