Why does nslookup for espn.com give an IP that goes to go.com?

If I do an nslookup on espn.com, an IP is returned 199.181.132.250. When I put this value in the browser I get go.com.

If I had add a 'Host header to the request, I still end up on go.com.

What am I not grasping?

Update

What I'm not understanding is... if I go to apple.com and open the Chrome Developer Tools and look at the network tab for the resource request, an IP is present. If I take that IP with a Host header of apple.com and use the Chrome tool Postman to send a request to said IP, I do not get apple.com returned. I get some garbage page. Why is this?

sinclairchase

Posted 2014-12-15T01:40:00.823

Reputation: 19

1Because ESPN is a Disney property. – Ramhound – 2014-12-15T01:54:59.560

Apple and Disney have their webservers configured differently – Ramhound – 2014-12-15T04:19:58.530

Answers

Multiple A-records are allowed in the direct DNS-zone. But only one PTR-record is recommended in the reverse zone. That is why lot of hostnames can be resolved to the single IP, while each IP in general is resolved to the one hostname.

All that primarily intended for name-based virtual hosts.

Kondybas

Posted 2014-12-15T01:40:00.823

Reputation: 499

So an HTTP request without a Host header would go to go.com but if I add a host header of espn.com, I'd get there? Is this correct? – sinclairchase – 2014-12-15T02:32:19.557

All queries goes to the same IP, but software on it decide how exactly they should be processed. Most http-servers can recognize the host header and behave correspondingly. In general there is so-called default virtual server that is used in such cases. – Kondybas – 2014-12-15T02:40:44.300

They seem to have a HTTP redirect in there.

Why do you care?

UPDATE Oh you asked for the IP. Well they're probably using Name-based Virtual Hosting on that IP.

Marki

Posted 2014-12-15T01:40:00.823

Reputation: 572