What is Web Hosting?
When you start an offline business, you need some space which will be your place of business. This space could be a shop in an upmarket mall or in a local shopping area. Or, it could be an office space in a commercial building. Akin to this, in the online world, is web hosting space. So, if you need to show your website to the world, you need some space on the hard disk drive of a Web Server. Space in the real world is measured in square feet or square metres, and space in the virtual world is measured in bytes. So, we get so many GigaBytes (GB) space, or so many TerraByte (TB) space and so on.
The role of a Web Host
Let us understand how the Internet works.
When you type a name say www.example.com in your browser address bar, and hit enter, the browser sends a query to match www.example.com with its IP address. The first server where this query lands is called the Recursive Resolver and is usually hosted by your ISP (Internet Service Provider). This Recursive Resolver knows many DNS Servers from which it can ask what is the IP address for www.example.com.
So, the first server it asks is called the Root Server. Root Server knows about all the Top Level Domains (TLDs) in the world. The Root Server has support of thousands of servers, each physically located at different places in the world. So, the Root Server forwards the query to the nearest DNS server. The DNS server holds information of all the domains, and immediately reverts to the Recursive Resolver. Recursive resolver tells the IP address to your web browser, and the website is displayed on your computer. It has taken more time for you to read this process, than it would take the web browser to fetch the website for you. Such is the power of computing and telecommunication today.
What is a Web Hosting Server
A web server is a computer which allows other users to access its contents from anywhere in the world. A web server is loaded with Server software to handle requests. Other than HTTP, a web server also handles POP, SMTP, XMPP, BOSH etc. You can use Apache Web Server for Linux computers and IIS for Windows based computers. The terminology used is LAMP, (Linux – Apache – MySQL – PHP) for Linux servers.
Every device connected to the Internet has an IP (Internet Protocol) address. Web Servers also need an IP address. That too a static one. When you take a broadband connection, your Internet Service Provider gives you a dynamic IP address. Which means that the IP address keeps changing. Web servers have constant IP addresses.
Web hosting plans
Web hosting is divided into three types
The difference lies in the configuration and technology used by the server, the allocation of resources and some additional services offered by the hosting company (Web Hosting Provider).
Shared Web Hosting
Shared hosting, as the name suggests, you share the resources of a Web server. This means the Web Server’s RAM, Hard drive space and Bandwidth are shared. There are some limitations to the number of domains you can host, the number of databases you can make, whether you get Cloud Distribution or not, you get an SSL or not, how frequently is the backup of your website taken etc. The most important aspect here is Support. With shared hosting, you may get only ticket based support. Which means it will not be instant or 24 x 7 priority support. In case of a problem, you can raise a support ticket, and then wait for it to be resolved.
Virtual Private Server Hosting
With Virtual Private server Hosting, you get more priorities on hosting. You get more RAM, more disk space and probably unlimited bandwidth. You can host more websites and more databases. You get access to CDN and SSL for all your websites. You also get dedicated IP addresses. In addtion you get better security. You get a choice of Web Panels. The most common web panel offered by most web hosting companies is cPanel, but with VPS hosting, you can choose from InterVorx or cPanel.
Dedicated Web Hosting
Dedicated Hosting is like having the whole building to yourself. You can use it whichever way you want. You get unlimited web space, unlimited domain name hosting, unlimited databases, unlimited SSL, CDN as well as priority support. Some companies even offer 99.99% uptime. Dedicated web hosting also offers enterprise level processors with ECC memory.
You can save money on your web hosting space while still getting most of the features. I will take up a comparison of the best plans available from some popular hosting companies, in my next article.