SFlanders Posts

So, you are ready to purchase SSL certificates, did you know that not all SSL certificates are created equally? Let me start by taking a step back and asking an easier question, do you want your site to be available with and without a leading ‘www.’? Many people may not even consider the latter question relevant, but I assure you it is. Some people have a preference in that they always want the URL to either include the leading ‘www.’ or remove it while others do not care and want them both to work. In either case, a SSL problem may exist depending on the issuer of the SSL certificate.

The problem with supporting multiple host names over SSL on the same server is that they each require a unique, static IP address. As many of you probably know, static IP addresses are not cheap and are not easy to come by. In order to get more than a single static IP address a justification form usually needs to be filled out. One thing you may not know about IPv4 addresses is that they are quickly running out. As such, anything that can be done to use these addresses more efficiently would be beneficial to all until IPv6 becomes more commonly used.

For those interested in using SSL certificates, I would like to bring up two very important things to keep in mind:

• Under most circumstances, each site that utilizes a SSL certificate must have a unique, static IP address
• All SSL certificates are not the same so be sure you understand what type of certificate you are purchasing

Before purchasing or beginning to architect your domain supporting SSL, I encourage you to read and fully understand how SSL works. In order to support valid SSL authentication on all operating systems and web browsers, each domain that utilizes a SSL certificate must have a unique, static IP address assigned to it. In addition, the web server application used must be configured at a minimum to use IP-based virtual hosts.