The Problem With Web Hosting Today
When it comes to web hosting, the quality of the bandwidth is as important (if not more important) than the hardware your site runs on. That’s because even with the fastest web server, your site will come to a crawl if it’s connected to poor quality bandwidth.
In the beginning, the Internet consisted of a single network (backbone) used by US government-funded researchers and organizations. Today, the Internet consists of more than a dozen backbones and hundreds of interconnected computer networks. These networks exchange traffic with one another primarily at two public network access points in the US — one on each coast (MAE East & MAE West).
Then the Internet grew and telecommunications companies built additional backbones to support the additional traffic. But while additional backbones provided more bandwidth, the overburdened public network access points caused major slowdowns and serious bottlenecks. To ease this congestion, backbone providers created private connections or ‘peering points,’ between their networks. This allows data to move from one network to another with much less use of the public access points.
But as Internet traffic continues to increase, private peering points are becoming more congested and backbone providers lack the financial incentive to invest money to accommodate their competitors’ traffic. When peering points are congested, data packet loss occurs, slowing downloads and decreasing the reliability of data transmissions. This may not sound like a problem, but when you consider that even a one percent packet loss can double your customer’s download time, you can see how points of congestion lead to major slowdowns in data transmission on the Internet.
The solution: Intelligent Routing Technology and ASsimilator Technology.
Intelligent Routing Technology simply means instead of routing your Web site traffic through MAE East or MAE West or peering points, your web site is directly connected to the major backbones. Nine of these backbones are considered major and carry approximately 95% of all US Internet traffic. Data from point A to point B is sent directly to its destination via the fastest and least congested path possible. This dramatically boosts your web site’s performance. Multiple routing options also virtually guarantee connectivity to the Internet, regardless of problems individual backbone providers may be experiencing. This technology also assures you of superior performance during peak traffic times by getting your data to its destination and back in the fastest, most efficient way.
ASsimilator technology is intelligent software-based systems for Internet Protocol route optimization-that selects the most direct route for your data. ASsimilator assesses the global routing tables being advertised by all of the backbone networks home to a given service point. It automatically determines exactly which Internet Protocol routes are to be optimized to which networks. ASsimilator then routes data to its intended destination backbone. A verification system allows ASsimilator to monitor the routing of data, and if routing is found to be suboptimal, adjustments may be made to further optimize routing. ASsimilator controls outbound routing to a backbone network from the service point as well as influences inbound routing from non-controlled networks.
So what does this all mean if you are looking for a company to host your website?
You need to have your website hosted by a company that uses these TWO technologies. They are BOTH necessary for the effective and efficient functioning of your website. It will bring certainty to the process of communicating on the Internet — a peace of mind that your website has the redundancy and bandwidth needed to stay online 24/7.
Additionally, it will allow your customers to receive fast, reliable and centrally managed Internet connectivity services that maximize the performance of their mission-critical Internet-based applications.
Rick Caraballo is the author of this article and the CEO of Avance Web Marketing- http://www.avancewebmarketing.com, a South Florida Web Marketing firm that provides state-of-the-art web design, e-commerce, marketing consulting services and web hosting using BOTH Intelligent Routing and ASsimilator Technologies and up to nine of the major internet backbones.
Tags: Fast Web Hosting, hosting, internet hosting, reliable web hosting, Web Hosting, website hostingWeb Hosts The Basics
Before you start searching for a web host, you must familiarize yourself with the terminology used in this field. The following terms are also considered key factors in deciding the suitable hosting plan that meets your requirements. You can start learning what does each term mean and how does it affect your selection.
Web Host
A web host, also known as web server, is a computer connected to the internet. This computer is more powerful than normal PCs and is set up to serve up websites. Your website content will reside on this computer, which will give people who surf the internet a way to access your website.
Web hosts can be categorized into three main categories based on the price range and common features for each category:
1. Free Hosts: limited in space, bandwidth and other features. Suitable for personal websites or for temporary usage. Usually enforce pop-up, text or banner ads. They do not provide the best performance and/or reliability. They provide minimum or no customer support. If you register for a free host, your domain will be something like yourname.freehost.com or www.freehost.com/yourname.
2. Shared Hosts: most websites are using this type of hosting. Suitable for personal, small and medium businesses. Prices range from $1 to about $25 a month. Features also range from very limited space/bandwidth to semi-dedicated servers. Your website has its own top level domain (e.g. www.website-hostings.net) The number of websites on a server affects its performance and availability, more websites usually means less performance. Servers hosting less number of shared websites are more expensive, but more reliable. Some companies allow customers to host multiple websites with different domains under a single account.
3. Dedicated Hosts: A full server dedicated to a single customer. Usually used by large businesses and very active websites with thousands of daily visitors. The customer will have full control over the server, and can create as many websites as he likes. Customer can have his own hosting company run on a rented dedicated server. Prices depend on the specifications and services provided with the server, starting from about $100 up to about $800 dollars a month.
4. Colocated Hosts: very similar to dedicated hosts, but the customer owns the server hardware instead of renting it. The server will be housed in provider’s data center. Prices are a bit higher than dedicated servers.
5. Reseller Hosts: providers offer web server storage to customers, who then resell the web server storage to their customers. Providers usually offer resellers a discount price.
6. Other Hosts: there are few other types of hosts such as email hosts, media hosts, data hosts, etc but these are out of the scope of this article.
Domain Name
www.website-hostings.net is an example of a domain name. It’s a name that points to where your website is physically located. The actual address of your website is a set of numbers that looks like (70.86.135.242). This address is unique for every web server. Domain names are just pointers to the real addresses. It’s easier to remember the domain names than the IP addresses.
Space / Storage
The amount of web server’s disk space available for customer’s website files, images and databases. It can be as small as 5MB in some free hosts and as big as 300GB for some dedicated servers. Space prices reduced significantly during the last few years. Customer can find hosting plans offering 3GB of space for less than $10 a month.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the amount of data transferred from web server to clients’ internet browsers. Each time a person view a page data is transmitted from the server to that person’s PC. Audio, video and images contents consume much more bandwidth than text. Bandwidth can be as low as 100MB a month in some free web hosts and as high as 2000GB a month in some dedicated servers. Customer can find hosting plans offering 75GB of monthly data transfer for less than $10.
Server Type
Usually means the operating system than runs the web server. Common types are Windows, Linux and UNIX. Server type determines the server side scripting and database types. Windows usually runs ASP and ASP.NET with Access or SQL Server databases. Linux/UNIX servers usually runs CGI, PHP or JSP with mySQL or Oracle databases. Windows servers are usually more expensive than Linux/UNIX servers.
Databases
As you have seen in server types, there are different types of databases. The most commonly used is mySQL because its an open source GPL (free) software and can serve a lot of online applications’ requirements such as forums, content management, mailing lists, etc. MySQL, however, has some limitations in its features. Complicated large business sites will need more powerful databases such as Oracle or SQL Server.
Server Side Scripting
Most new users prefer to use PHP as server side scripting. The reason is that there are hundreds of open source (GPL) PHP scripts that can meet a lot of webmaster’s requirements. Similar to mySQL, PHP has some limitations in features required by advanced websites, which makes some senior web developers prefer to use ASP.NET or JSP. Other developers still prefer to use Cold Fusion, CGI, ASP or PERL.
Most hosting plans include the feature of having some email accounts with customer’s domain (e.g. admin@website-hostings.net). The number and size of email accounts depends on the hosting plan. Free plans do not usually have this feature, small plans give about 10 accounts where big plans do not limited the number. Those email accounts are usually web based and accessible through POP3 clients as well.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
A standard way of transferring files across the Internet. Most webmasters upload and download their websites contents using FTP. The upload or download processes are usually performed using FTP client software. To access their web servers, webmasters need FTP username and password. Some hosts give more than one FTP account to their customers. FTP can by anonymous as well, but its not recommended for security reasons.
Control Panel
Most web hosting companies provide their customers with a control panel, a web based application that helps in managing websites. Common functions in control panels are: managing email accounts, providing statistics, managing FTP accounts, managing domains and subdomains and managing databases. The most commonly used control panel application is cPanel. Some companies develop their own control panel application.
Uptime
An important feature of web hosts is their uptime, which is usually measured in percentage. A server that goes down for an average of 30 minutes a day will have an uptime percentage of about 99.98%, which is acceptable for most small to medium business websites. Anything less than this percentage is not suitable for a business website. Mission critical sites cannot tolerate frequent outages, thus they may use web monitoring services to notify web administrators immediately when an outage happens.
Price
With the wide range of options available for customers, the price is also ranges from 0 to $1000 a month. Most personal, small and medium websites shouldn’t cost more than $15 a month. It’s not recommended for business website owners to go for very cheap plans (less than $5) because this price usually means a compromise in the quality of support and reliability of the server.
Abbas Alafoo is the creator of http://www.website-hostings.net, a collection of articles and tutorials about web hosting, design, development, promotion and administration.
Tags: Web Hosting, web hosts, website hostingProvide A Good Home For Your Website
Selecting a web hosting company is like sending one of your children off to college. You may have complete confidence in your son or daughter’s abilities but unless they are placed in the proper environment they will not have the opportunity to thrive. Likewise, no matter how sophisticated or impressive the website you have designed may be, if you do not place the site where it can perform optimally you will likely be disappointed in the results.
Selecting web hosting is not simply finding a place where your website can reside. It is finding the company that offers the resources that will allow your website to operate effectively and to grow as the business or public demands. This means that you must be able to store and transfer enough data so that your site functions smoothly but also remains affordable.
Free web hosting services normally require that you allow ads to be placed on your site. These generate revenue for the hosting company by enabling them to display ads to visitors to your website. Only you can determine if the ads are appropriate for visitors to your site. In addition you will have to decide if the amount of storage and the available bandwidth will be sufficient for the type of website that you want to display. A free service may be completely appropriate for a personal website that is periodically modified. But trying to operate a site with significant traffic or a commercial focus may be “penny wise and pound foolish.”
All commercial web hosting companies are not created equal. Of course, cost is an issue but reliability and service will likely be major factors in the decision making process. You should expect your host to be up and functioning 100% of the time but you will likely only see guarantees of 99-99.5% uptime. Less than this is unacceptable.
If you will personally be managing much of the activity for your site, make sure that you are comfortable with the Control Panel. Some hosts present Control Panels that are cumbersome and complicated. You want to easily navigate through routine functions.
You will also want to make sure that the hosting company has functionality that you may not be using now but will likely use in the future. These would include PHP, MySQL, SSI, .htaccess, SSL, etc. Examine the offers for email and autoresponders also.
Many web hosting services offer very low rates if you commit to a year or more of hosting. While this may turn out to be an excellent value in the long term, it may be advisable to pay each month until you are confident in the service and, quite importantly, the quality of the technical support that they provide. Getting accurate responses to questions quickly will make your life as a webmaster less stressful.
©Copyright 2004 Online Enterprises
About the author: Terry McDermott is an Internet marketing professional managing a portfolio of websites. He has had adventures with a variety of web hosts and now operates his own hosting website at http://www.alphawebhosting.com. He can be reached at info@alphawebhosting.com
Tags: Web Hosting, website hosting