Error with DOJO when using IP - dojo

Question

Strange error with an Project using dojo:
if i call : http://localhost/project everything works like expected.
if i call : http://127.0.0.1/project everything works like expected.
if i call : http://192.168.2.1/project i get the following error (ONLY in IE6!):
"Bundle not found, locale.."
Any ideas?
Iam running Zend Server CE with PHP 5.2
if i add: 192.168.2.1 to "hosts" it works (windows)

Answer 1

Sounds like Zend server is performing some kind of virtual site support using the site name as a partial domain.
I can't say 100% if/how it is beacuse I don't use Zend, but I can explain the principle using Apache as an Example.
There are 3 ways in which a web site can be virtually hosted under a single web server application, this applies to most servers on the market today, Apache, IIS, nginx and many others.
It all boils down to one thing, giving one running server application instance the ability to host multiple individual websites.
The 3 methods of seperating sites are as follows:
By IP address : If you have multiple IP addresses (Usually -but not always beacuse you have multiple network interface cards) then you can tell your server application to listen to one IP for one site, another IP for another site and so on. If you browse to one IP you'll get one site, and likewise the other on the other IP.
By Port Number : If your using only one IP address, then you can bind to multiple port numbers, port 80 is generally the default for web servers, but by browsing to an address and pinning the port number on the end (http://mysite.com:99) you'll force the browser to use that port. You can then have multiple websites listening on different ports and select them manually at browse time as required.
By Host Name Header: This is by far the most common way of supporting multiple sites, all web servers that understand the HTTP/1.1 protocol have to obey a header field in the request that contains the host name, when a request comes in for EG: http://mysite,com/ then there will be an entry in the request header that looks like 'Host: mysite.com' the webserver can then use that to say, oh yes.. I know which one that is.. and it then selects and serves the correct website.
The problems start to arise however when you start to use IP addresses that generally cannot be resolved or have no DNS name, because the web server then doesn't know which hostname to tag it to.
As an example in Apache, if you set up a virtual host, then try to browse that server using just the IP address, you'll get the default server, which in many cases won't even be configured to respond correctly or display anything.
To compound this, going up to web application layer, many frameworks also do their own checks on hostnames and other variables passed to them by the web server, and many make decisions on how to operate based on this information.
If you've gotten to the default web application by IP address, then there's a high chance that the framework may get confused at being presented with an IP address as a host name.
As the OP noted, in many cases, you can add a name to your hosts file and use this as a poor man's DNS substitute, the file to modify can be found in the following locations:
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ - on windows
and
/etc/
on Linux/Unix
The file is generally just called 'hosts' and is a plain text file. Adding a line like:
123.456.789.123 myserver
Will tie http://myserver/ to http://123.456.789.123/
If you can, and your doing a lot of web applications it may be worth setting up your own DNS server, most Linux distros will allow you to install 'Bind' and I do also believe there is a version available for windows too.
I'm not going to go into the pro's and cons of private DNS servers here, it's a whole other subject in itself, but if your likely to be doing a lot of additions to your hosts, then in the long run you'll find it a better option.