Re: questions on SSL

[judd.obannon () rackspace com]

Quite Honestly you should encrypt traffic with SSL (or other  
protocols) any time you have the opportunity as the meager amount of  
bandwith it entails is far outweighed by the privacy it provides. No  
educated user will send any personal information without it being  
encrypted.

As far as SSL certificates for multipule sites the best way to go  
about this is to purchase a certificate that uses alternative domain  
names, sometimes referred to as alternative common names. My personal  
experience is that GoDaddy provides them for the cheapest fee (their  
wildcard certificates are very reasonable as well). Alternative CN  
certificates will work for x.domain.com, y.domain.com, or any other  
domain that is listed on the certificate. A wildcard will work for  
<anything>.domain.com but unless it also includes an alternative CN  
for domain.com the bare domain.com will not be included.

Sorry for such a long answer but it can be a bit complicated. If you  
know exactly what you want to protect with the certificate any good  
agency that sells you a certificate can provide you with the best one.

Also you can get free certificates from startssl.com  
(https://www.startssl.com/) and their root CA (the thing that allows  
the browser to declare the site is safe) is in more and more browsers  
(firefox 3 for certain).

Quoting s0h0us () yahoo com:

> I'm lookig for some comments regarding using SSL to encrypt   
> connectivity to entire website as opposed to just certain critical   
> connections such as an online banking link at a financial   
> institutions. is this a more common practice now? Bandwidth wouldn't  
>  seem to be as big an issue as it was in the past with dialup   
> connections.
> Can one SSL certificate be used to encrypt multiple links   
> originating from the same site:
> https://x.domain.com
> https://y.domain.com
>
> thanks for the feedback




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