Does Nginx need a unique ip address for every site served over HTTPS like Apache?

With Apache's the most common HTTPS setup you need 1 IP Address per site. Does Nginx have this same limitation or can a single IP Address serve an unlimited number of HTTPS sites?

Solution 1:

Nginx can be recompiled with SNI to allow this but it also requires your version of OpenSSL to support it (0.8.9 I believe). See here for more information.

It's also worth noting that Apache now supports SNI, it has been backported to 2.2.*.

The issue you are likely to face is browser compatibility. The guide above (nginx) states the following compatibility but I haven't checked this myself:

* Opera 8.0;
* MSIE 7.0 (but only on Windows Vista or higher);
* Firefox 2.0 and other browsers using Mozilla Platform rv:1.8.1;
* Safari 3.2.1 (Windows version supports SNI on Vista or higher);
* and Chrome (Windows version supports SNI on Vista or higher, too).

Solution 2:

The limitation is at the SSL level, not the server level. All web servers have this.