Web hosting service
Web hosting service
Web
hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows
individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the
World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server
owned or leased for use by clients, as well as providing Internet
connectivity, typically in a data center. Web hosts can also provide
data center space and connectivity to the Internet for other servers
located in their data center.
1991,
the Internet was restricted to use only for research and education in
the sciences and engineering and was used for FTP, Telnet, email, and
USENET traffic but only a tiny number of web pages. The World Wide Web
protocols had only just been written and not until the end of 1993 would
there be a graphical web browser for Mac or Windows computers. Even
after there was some opening up of internet access, the situation was
confused until 1995. To host a website on the internet, an individual or
company would need their own computer or server. As not all companies
had the budget or expertise to do this, web hosting services began to
offer to host users websites on their own servers, without the client
needing to own the necessary infrastructure required to operate the
website. The owners of the websites, also called webmasters would be
able to create a website that would be hosted on the web hosting
service's server and published to the web by the web hosting service.
Web hosting service
Types of Hosting
Internet hosting services can run Web servers. The scope of web hosting services varies greatly.
Larger hosting services
Many
large companies that are not Internet service providers need to be
permanently connected to the web to send email, files, etc. to other
sites. The company may use the computer as a website host to provide
details of their goods and services and facilities for online orders. A
complex site calls for a more comprehensive package that provides
database support and application development platforms. These facilities
allow customers to write or install scripts for applications like
forums and content management. Also, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is
typically used for websites that wish to keep the data transmitted more
secure.
Web hosting service
- Reseller web hosting: allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers could function, for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who they are affiliated with as a reseller. Resellers' accounts may vary tremendously in size: they may have their own virtual dedicated server to a collocated server. Many resellers provide a nearly identical service to their provider's shared hosting plan and provide the technical support themselves.
- Shared web hosting service: one's website is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few sites to hundreds of websites. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU. The features available with this type of service can be quite basic and not flexible in terms of software and updates. Resellers often sell shared web hosting and web companies often have reseller accounts to provide hosting for clients.
- Virtual Dedicated Server: also known as a Virtual Private Server (VPS), divides server resources into virtual servers, where resources can be allocated in a way that does not directly reflect the underlying hardware. VPS will often be allocated resources based on a one server to many VPSs relationship, however virtualization may be done for a number of reasons, including the ability to move a VPS container between servers. The users may have root access to their own virtual space. Customers are sometimes responsible for patching and maintaining the server (unmanaged server) or the VPS provider may provide server admin tasks for the customer (managed server).
- Dedicated hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it (user has root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, the user typically does not own the server. One type of dedicated hosting is self-managed or unmanaged. This is usually the least expensive for dedicated plans. The user has full administrative access to the server, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated server.
- Managed hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server but is not allowed full control over it (user is denied root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, they are allowed to manage their data via FTP or other remote management tools. The user is disallowed full control so that the provider can guarantee quality of service by not allowing the user to modify the server or potentially create configuration problems. The user typically does not own the server. The server is leased to the client.
- Cloud hosting: is a new type of hosting platform that allows customers powerful, scalable and reliable hosting based on clustered load-balanced servers and utility billing. A cloud hosted website may be more reliable than alternatives since other computers in the cloud can compensate when a single piece of hardware goes down. Also, local power disruptions or even natural disasters are less problematic for cloud hosted sites, as cloud hosting is decentralized. Cloud hosting also allows providers to charge users only for resources consumed by the user, rather than a flat fee for the amount the user expects they will use, or a fixed cost upfront hardware investment. Alternatively, the lack of centralization may give users less control on where their data is located which could be a problem for users with data security or privacy concerns.
- Colocation web hosting service: similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the colo server; the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of web hosting service. In most cases, the colocation provider may provide little to no support directly for their client's machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. In most cases for colo, the client would have his own administrator visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes. Formerly, many colocation providers would accept any system configuration for hosting, even ones housed in desktop-style mini tower cases, but most hosts now require rack mount enclosures and standard system configurations.
- Clustered hosting: having multiple servers hosting the same content for better resource utilization. Clustered servers are a perfect solution for high-availability dedicated hosting, or creating a scalable web hosting solution. A cluster may separate web serving from database hosting capability. (Usually web hosts use clustered hosting for their shared hosting plans, as there are multiple benefits to the mass managing of clients).
- Home server: usually a single machine placed in a private residence can be used to host one or more web sites from a usually consumer-grade broadband connection. These can be purpose-built machines or more commonly old PCs. Some ISPs actively attempt to block home servers by disallowing incoming requests to TCP port 80 of the user's connection and by refusing to provide static IP addresses. A common way to attain a reliable DNS host name is by creating an account with a dynamic DNS service. A dynamic DNS service will automatically change the IP address that a URL points to when the IP address changes.
- Grid hosting: this form of distributed hosting is when a server cluster acts like a grid and is composed of multiple nodes.
Some specific types of hosting provided by web host service providers:
File
hosting service, Image hosting service, Video hosting service, Blog
hosting service, Paste bin, Shopping cart software, E-mail hosting
service.
Smaller hosting services
The
most basic is web page and small-scale file hosting, where files can be
uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files
are usually delivered to the Web "as is" or with minimal processing.
Many Internet service providers (ISPs) offer this service free to
subscribers. Individuals and organizations may also obtain Web page
hosting from alternative service providers. Free web hosting service is
offered by different companies with limited services, sometimes
supported by advertisements, and often limited when compared to pay
hosting.
Single
page hosting is generally sufficient for personal web pages. Personal
web site hosting is typically free, advertisement-sponsored, or
inexpensive. Business web site hosting often has a higher expense
depending upon the size and type of the site.
Web hosting service
Host management
The
host may also provide an interface or control panel for managing the
Web server and installing scripts, as well as other modules and service
applications like e-mail. A web server that does not use a control panel
for managing the hosting account, is often referred to as a "headless"
server. Some hosts specialize in certain software or services (e.g.
e-commerce, blogs, etc.).
Uptime & Reliability
The
availability of a website is measured by the percentage of a year in
which the website is publicly accessible and reachable via the Internet.
This is different from measuring the uptime of a system. Uptime refers
to the system itself being online. Uptime does not take into account
being able to reach it as in the event of a network outage a hosting
provider’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) may include a certain amount of
scheduled downtime per year in order to perform maintenance on the
systems. This scheduled downtime is often excluded from the SLA
timeframe, and needs to be subtracted from the Total Time when
availability is calculated. Depending on the wording of an SLA, if the
availability of a system drops below that in the signed SLA, a hosting
provider often will provide a partial refund for time lost. How downtime
is determined changes from provider to provider, therefore reading the
SLA is imperative. Not all providers release uptime statistics. Most
hosting providers will guarantee at least 99.9% uptime which will allow
for 43m of downtime per month, or 8h 45m of downtime per year.
Web hosting service
Security
Because
web hosting services host websites belonging to their customers, online
security is an important concern. When a customer agrees to use a web
hosting service, they are relinquishing control of the security of their
site to the company that is hosting the site. The level of security
that a web hosting service offers is extremely important to a
prospective customer and can be a major consideration when considering
which provider a customer may choose.
Web
hosting servers can be attacked by malicious users in different ways,
including uploading malware or malicious code onto a hosted website.
These attacks may be done for different reasons, including stealing
credit card data, launching a Distributed Denial of Service Attack or
spamming.
Obtaining hosting
A
customer needs to evaluate the requirements of the application to
choose what kind of hosting to use. Such considerations include database
server software, scripting software, and operating system. Most hosting
providers provide Linux-based web hosting which offers a wide range of
different software. A typical configuration for a Linux server is the
LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python. The web
hosting client may want to have other services, such as email for their
business domain, databases or multimedia services. A customer may also
choose Windows as the hosting platform. The customer still can choose
from Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby but may also use ASP .Net or Classic
ASP. Web hosting packages often include a Web Content Management System,
so the end-user does not have to worry about the more technical
aspects.
Web hosting service
No comments