Asked by
anandmadan
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Computers & Technology
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2:23 PM on December 04, 2007
Shekhar Deb's Answer
If you want a web site, you will need web hosting. Basically, web hosting provides a way for people to access your web site through the internet. Without it, there would be no way for people to see the page.
What are the different types of web hosting?
There are different kinds of web hosting companies out there with different characteristics. The main types of web hosts can be organized into the following categories:
Shared Hosting
In shared hosting (also known as virtual web hosting), many websites are sharing the space on the same physical web servers. Depending on the web host, a physical web server can hosts a few hundreds to even thousands of different websites at one time. You may wonder if a physical web server is shared by so many websites, will the performance of the web server deteriorate? In fact, web servers are usually equipped with high-end powerful computer, therefore it can support up to a certain number of websites without any problem. But when a web server is overloaded and exceeded the reasonable number of websites that it can support, you will begin to experience slower response from the web server. Nevertheless, a reputable and experience web hosting provider will constantly monitor the performance of the web server and will add new web servers when deem necessary without sacrificing the benefits of the website owners.
Since a physical web server is shared (diskspace, computer processing power, bandwidth, memory) by many websites, the web hosting provider can therefore afford to offer a lower hosting price. For the same reason, websites on the shared hosting would have to accept slower server response time. Typically, shared hosting plans start at US$5 - US$20 per month.
Dedicated Hosting
In contrast to shared hosting, dedicated hosting assigned a specific web server to be used only by one customer (hence, the name 'dedicated'). Since a dedicated web server is allocated to only a single customer, that customer has the option to host single/multiple web sites, modify the software configuration, handle greater site traffic and scale the bandwidth as necessary. Obviously, dedicated hosting commands a higher premium and typically starts at US$50 per month and can range up to US$200 - US$500 per month. Therefore, dedicated hosting is regularly used by high traffic and extremely important website.
Co-location hosting
In dedicated hosting, the web server belongs to the web hosting providers and customers only rent the web server during the hosting period. While in co-location hosting, the customer actually owns the web server hardware and only housed their web server within the web hosting provider's secure data center. In this way, the customer has full control over their web server and simultaneously benefit from the 24/7 server monitoring and maintenance provided by the secure data center. Depending on the monthly bandwidth and rack space required, typically co-location hosting range from US$500 - US$1000 per month.
Reseller hosting
In reseller hosting, a web hosting provider offers web server storage to third-party (i.e. reseller) at a discount price, who then resell the web server storage to their customers. Typically, resellers are web consultants including web designers, web developers, or system integration company who resell the web hosting as a add-on service to complement their other range of services. Commonly, resellers can receive up to 50 percent discount on the price of a hosting account from the web hosting provider. And resellers are allowed to decide its own pricing structure and even establish its own branding (in other words, reseller setup its web hosting company on the Internet and start selling web hosting plans under its brand). WebHostingBuzz is an example of a web hosting company with reseller hosting program.
To the reseller's customers, the reseller is the 'web host provider'. In cases when technical problems such as server down and access problem arise
Answered at
2:41 PM on December 04, 2007
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