Restricting access to documents on the Web

Each Web (HTTP) server provides its own methods for restricting access to Web documents. Most servers, including Netscape's Communications and Commerce servers, NCSA and CERN httpd, and John Frank's WN, provide at least two mechanisms for limited access to files and directories. These methods are:

1. Limit by host or IP address
2. Limit by username and passwd

Here are some examples of limiting by host name or IP address.

• This file can not be accessed by any SDSC computers - the directory contains a file called .access. The .access file looks like this.
  !*.sdsc.edu

  This implementation returns an error code 403 to the requesting browser if the host does not appear in the access file.

• This file may be accessed by any SDSC computers.

Here is an example of limiting access by username and passwd.

• This file can only be accessed by username "lefty" with the password "right."