how to get a host with an @ sign!?

[Danny Mayer]

At 07:21 PM 9/20/02, Kevin Darcy wrote:

>Christof Drescher wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> > some providers currently offer the possibility to use @-DOmains, e.g.
> > instead of an ordinary www.mycompany.org or a host like
> > office.mycompany.org you see
> >
> > jim at mycompany.org and office at mycompany.org
> >
> > which can be used as a browser url like http://jim@mycompany.org.
> >
> > I need to do that myself as well, but don't know how to achieve this.
>
>Your browser isn't interpreting the @ or anything to the left of it as
>part of the hostname.

That is incorrect.  The host name here is mycompany.org. The browser
will strip anything to the left of the @ sign in order to figure out where
to send the request unless it's using an HTTP proxy server, in which
case it interprets nothing and sends the URL as is to the Proxy Server.

>  Look in the HTTP specs to see how "jim" is being
>interpreted in the above URL; if it means anything special, then only
>the web server is differentiating it. This is not a DNS issue.

The HTTP specs don't deal with URL's, only with the HTTP protocol
which is the first 4 characters of this URL. jim is part of a name/password
prefix to a host name that the Web server on that host uses for access
permissions.

Yes, it's not a DNS issue.

Danny