Is it possible for many domain names to share one IP address? For example, www.xjtl.com, www.fmie.com, sdmfl.com, etc.
Hundreds of domain names share just one IP – when you do a DNS query for each of them, the same IP is returned.
Are there any laws or Internet rules that disallow this?
Answer
Yes, this is an extremely common practice. It is called a Shared Web Hosting:
In name-based virtual hosting, also called shared IP hosting, the virtual hosts serve multiple hostnames on a single machine with a single IP address. This is possible because when a web browser requests a resource from a web server using HTTP/1.1 it includes the requested hostname as part of the request. The server uses this information to determine which web site to show the user. When you register/purchase your domain name on a particular "registrars name server", your DNS settings are kept on their server, and in most cases point your domain to the Name Server of your hosting provider. This Name Server is where the IP number (currently associated with your domain name) resides.
Any time you have a website that you look up its IP and when you type the IP directly into the browser and you got a different website, you just encountered Shared Hosting.
In fact, this website here uses it. Ping superuser.com or stackoverflow.com and you will get 198.252.206.16 for both. If you type that IP address into your browser, it will not work and you will get an error saying the site does not exist because it did not have a hostname to check and see which site it should serve you.
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