What Is Hosting

The question is “what is hosting?” Well, are you free for the next hour or two?

Hosting is one of those topics that starts out as a simple question where you’d expect a quick answer but then it quickly turns into an crazy discussion the more you talk about it.

Simply stated, every web page on the Internet is 'hosted' somewhere.

Let me explain that a little further. Lets first establish that every web page is nothing more than a collection of files of text or scripts, images files, audio files, and nowadays, video files. These files are created and stored on a computer somewhere in the world. It could be the C drive of you computer, for example. At this stage of the process, the web page is not available on the Internet yet as it is not possible for other computers to access your computer to find those files and few them on their monitors. At least, if you have proper security on your computer they should be.

Let me back up a minute. When you make the decision to connect your computer to the Internet, your computer will be assigned an IP (Internet Protocol) address. The format of an IP address is a 32-bit numeric address written as four numbers separated by periods. Each number can be zero to 255. For example, 1.160.10.240 could be an IP address. These numbers identify the location of your computer just as your house and street numbers identify your location so your mail will be properly routed to you. Your computer is now accessible to anyone who knows your IP and your passwords and has the correct software to access your computer. If you computer is turned on, these people could access your files. So our example computer of 1.160.10.240 will send data to an from another computer, say at address 1.185.25.365.

Every time you surf the net, your computer at for example 1.160.10.240 is connecting to another computer somewhere with the files to that site stored on it. The day you browse through 50 sites you’ve connected to 50 different computer addresses in probably 50 different cities around the world. If you think of the telephone network of one phone connecting to another phone number elsewhere, you would get a pretty clear picture of how the Internet connects as well. Just as the phones only connect when the second phone is picked up, you connect on the Internet when your computer links to another computer that is turned on.

If you have a powerful enough machine and the right software, you can host your own website - and the websites of your family and friends, for that matter. Actually, I did that a several years in the 90’s. I had a server computer that I kept connected to the interned 24/7. I then gave my select group of client the IP address of that server so they could access the files and information I put on that server. That server was available to anyone who had the software to connect to it, but they would need to actually get past all the security stops to access the information. It was like my own mini worldwide web. However, most of us do not want the world on our computers, nor do we want to be bothered with the maintenance and security issues of blocking unauthorized access.

That’s where hosting comes in. A person or company decides to become a host and offers the service of not only storing your web page files on their computer or server, but they will also make it possible for computers world wide to be able to find the files to your website that are stored on that server. The companies providing the space on the Internet are called Web Hosts or Web Hosting companies. As your hosting company they will secure your files on a web “server” which is a computer that is permanently connected to the Internet, thus making your files available 24/7 to the rest of the world.

While these concepts may seem intimidating (Host my own website? You're kidding right? ), it is not too hard to envision a day not too many years away when most of us will indeed host our own sites - or, rather, our personal computers will do that with a surprising minimum of fuss required on our part. In fact, there is software already available the enables you to do just that. And the software is easy to use. Nowadays, you can even host your own radio web blog on your own computer. And as technology advances, hosting becomes simpler all the time.

Types of Hosting

Every website is simply a collection of files, images, data, and such that is stored on a computer that is connected to the internet and web hosting is a service that offers you the mechanics of creating a virtual presence on the World Wide Web. Web host companies provide the work as data centers with their servers and disk spaces as all the files connected to your website need to be stored on a server somewhere, just waiting for someone to retrieve them when they decide to check what your site has to offer.

The most important decision you will have make is what type of web hosting plan to use for your web site. So what do you want to get from web hosting? Your own web space, of course.

By that I mean you will want to have a computer on which you are allocated enough storage to keep all your files for and online presences. These files include web pages, images, audios, and videos, to name a few. Initially you may be provided at total space of 200 MB and that’s plenty for a basic website. If you add a lot of sound, graphics, photos, or videos, you’ll need more than that.

You may also want an email account that is exclusively connected to your website, unlike in millions of public e-mail addresses such as Gmail or Yahoo. Most hosting accounts provide you with at least one email address that will be connected to your website. For example, if your website by called ‘smithfamily.com’ then your e-mail could be set up as to read ‘yourname@smithfamily.com’. Such an e-mail address looks more professional and gives you credibility as someone who is not a fly-by-night, especially if you’re truly serious about doing business on the web.

Before I begin to discuss the various types of websites, let’s briefly mention bandwidth. This refers to how much data is being transferred over the Internet in a certain amount of time. Many people overlook this as they become enamored with the low prices of packages. The absolute basic hosting package may make it very hard for your users to view your web page, more so if a single web page contains a lot of images, audios, or videos as they eat too much bandwidth. So when deciding what type of hosting you are needing, be sure to keep in mind what your website will contain and how much bandwidth will be required for your website guests to see what your really intended for them to see.

Understanding the various types of hosting that are available to you is essential to your getting your website online. There are services that will host your entire website while other providers will host your file folders, images, video, blogs, or shopping carts. There is also the popular one-click hosting providers that allow users to upload any type of file from their computer to the company's server, usually free of charge. However, for the purpose of this discussion, we will be limiting our talk to hosting websites.

Let’s walk through the maze of web hosting offers and see the various types of web hosting products available to you. We will be looking at each category briefly. The variety of products include:

• Free web hosting
• Shared web hosting
• Reseller web hosting
• Virtual Dedicated Server
• Dedicated Hosting
• Managed Hosting Services
• Colocation web hosting
• Clustered hosting
• Grid hosting

We’re going to look at these individually to discuss their features as well as their pros and cons. You will discover that web hosting plans are split into a few distinct categories, each with strengths and weaknesses. The first type is the free web host and the others are all to-be-paid-for packages.

Free Web Hosting

If you’re a beginner looking to put up a simple website, a free web page is definitely a very economical way to start. I know that’s where my first attempts were put over ten years ago. If I remember correctly, Geocities had the honor of hosting my very first web page over ten years ago. And they still offer hosting today. The hosting is easy and inexpensive or even at no cost. If your home or business has Internet connections, chances are your Internet service provider (ISP) offers you some free web space on their computers as a thank you for being a customer. Many people don't even know that their ISPs offer their customers them free hosting. Usually the allocated space is quite limited (between 5 and 10 megabytes) but it’s yours for the using. Also some companies that sell domains names also include free hosting as a thank you. GoDaddy is definitely one that does. Buy your domain name through them and they will host the basic web page for you.

With a free web hosting, the host will either place third-party adverts on your site, or have advertising pop-ups appear when your web site is accessed. They will usually advertise their own hosting services on your free web page as well. Many of these web-hosting services do not allow you to upload your own design, but provide online templates for you to build your site from. If your web site is not commercial and you're just looking for an online presence, this could be the type of web hosting service to consider.

The web hosting is so low cost it’s free and some even throw in a free email, so why isn’t every website on a free serves? The answer to that is fivefold. First most of the free sites are supported through advertising and so some form of advertising, usually in the form of a flashing or static banner, is placed prominently on your page, thus distracting your visitors from the important things you have to say. Second, the sites are usually limited in design choice, style, software development or color. As well, there is usually no or very limited security options, making it difficult to do business from that site. Technical support is virtually non-existent making it difficult for the beginner to get the help they need. And lastly, it is impossible to maintain a database on the site or get assistance in database management.

Free webs are great for sites with low traffic such as a family site or a display of your hobbies, but they are not recommended for high traffic or someone who is trying to build a real business. Most times your cannot use your domain name at a free site as you’ll be assigned a URL similar to http://wwww.name-of-the-free-site.com/users/~your-login-name.htm. Not an easy name to remember or to share with others, and definitely not very professional.

Free webs have their place on the web. They’re great for the beginner, the learner of HTML, for the kids and teenagers, and for the very basic non interactive website that millions create every year. However, the serious business builder usually progresses to on the many paid hosting options.

Shared Web Hosting

The most common type of hosting purchased by small businesses is a shared hosting account, sometimes called virtual hosting. With a shared hosting account your web site is placed on the same server as many other sites, from a few hundred to thousands, depending on the size and power of the server. The host manages the server almost completely although you maintain your site and your account. Typically, all the domains on that server will share a common pool of server resources such as RAM and CPU.

The very first thing you’ll notice that’s different from a free hosting plan is that you’ll be able to host your own domain name. Shared hosting plans also usually offer multiple software solutions like email, database, and many different editing options and the technical support that’s available varies from company to company. Great technical support is what will set a company apart from the rest of the herd. Although you maintain your site and your account, the hosting company manages the server almost completely you really do not need to have a lot of technical knowledge to put your site on a shared hosting plan.

Another advantages of using a Shared Hosting Plan include that it is low cost as the cost of setting up and maintaining the server is distributed among other web site owners, hence the name “shared”. This low cost makes this a great option for small business and entrepreneurs that have an average traffic flow to their site. Usually the hosting company will offer the web owner multiple software options for creating their website and uploading the files to the server.

However, there are some restrictions with the shared plan. First one I’ll mention is the security risk. The fact that you are sharing resources with many sites and you have no control over who owns those sites or what’s on them puts your site at a security risk, minor though it is. Compare it to living in a 20-story apartment building with 10 apartments on each floor. For the most part all the tenants will carry on their lives totally unaffected by the other residents. However, now consider if the tenant in Apartment 7D because a target for the mafia who deals with him by blowing up his apartment. Suddenly you are at risk, regardless of what floor you’re on. Same scenario happens when you have Shared Hosting. For the most part, there is no problem. However, if one of the sites on the sever you are sharing becomes the target of hackers or people determined to ruin the other business. If they manage to hack into the server or cause it to crash, when the server goes down, your site goes down, even though you weren’t the target. Or if they hack in, your data would also be vulnerable.

I have already alluded to the fact that since you are sharing a server, you are also sharing resources such as RAM and CPU. This means that there might be some restrictions on the amount of traffic your site is allowed to have. That means that heavy traffic to one of the other sites on the server can hammer the performance of your site. If you remember the example of living in the apartment building, if one tenant is suddenly having guests visit by the hundreds at all hours, your guests may have trouble getting the elevator to get to your place. Same thing can happen with shared web hosting. If suddenly one of the sites that’s sharing the server becomes extremely popular and has excessive traffic, that will make it more difficult for your guests to access your site. I’ve had times when I try to access a web site and get the error message the server is unavailable, yet an hour later I can access it with no problem. If this happens often, you may need to ask your hosting company to check into the problem.

Some shared hosting plans also have restrictions on what you may install on your site. Typically you are unable to install special software programs, as the host will need to keep a stable environment on the server for all his clients.

Customer Service with a well-established Shared Hosting company is usually good. However, there are hundreds of small hosting companies offering great plans and they may not be equipped to handle your technical support concerns 24/7. Thus, you may find that there is limited or restricted database support, technical support, or software support. The level of support definitely varies from company to company and plan to plan so you need to find the one that fits your level of expectations.

Dedicated Web Hosting

A dedicated hosting service is a type of Internet hosting where the client leases an entire server that is not shared with anyone. If your site gets lots of traffic or it needs special software, then you may require dedicated server that exclusively hosts your site. With dedicated hosting your web site is hosted on a dedicated server. You will have root access to the server and you control it completely. Although, it is the most expensive type of hosting, you do have unlimited control over software.

This is more flexible than shared hosting as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware and so on. Server administration can usually be provided by the hosting company as an add-on service. In some cases a dedicated server can offer less overhead and a larger as the dedicated servers are most often housed in data centres.

Support for any of the operating systems above typically depends on the level of management offered with a particular dedicated server plan. Operating system support may include updates to the core system in order to acquire the latest security fixes, patches, and system-wide vulnerability resolutions. Updates to core operating systems include kernel upgrades, service packs, application updates, and security patches that keep server secure and safe. Operating system updates and support relieves the burden of server management from the dedicated server owner.

Dedicated hosting offers solutions for the large business with high traffic and the business owner with multiple domain names and website. It offers the web owner various powerful email solutions and database support. Also, websites that require special software on their sites will find a dedicated server the answer to their concerns, as you should expect dedicated hosting to be very powerful and secure with almost unlimited software solutions and support.

However, as a drawback to dedicated hosting it is the most expensive type of hosting and does require higher skills and technical support on the part of the owner. It is therefore best suited for large websites with high traffic and or websites that use special software, such as games or huge inventory sites. It is definitely the most powerful and most secure form of hosting providing the user almost unlimited software solutions.

A dedicated hosting plan may provide you with the control over functionality of your website and it is a perfect solution for businesses and organizations that are not ready to or do not wish to make the substantial investment required to own and operate a server in-house. It is definitely a very affordable solution when compared to the cost to the user of purchasing and maintaining their own server, date and hardware security.

VPS Web Hosting

If you are looking for greater control and performance than a Shared Hosting account can provide, or a low-cost upgrade path to a Dedicated Server, a Virtual Private Server will be able to deliver dedicated-sized performance at a fraction of the cost. They come with exactly the same features, autonomy and functionality of a dedicated server, and are suitable for a wide range of tasks such as application testing/development, multiple virtual domain hosting, high traffic websites or game serving.

A Virtual Private Dedicated Server, often referred to as VPS Web Hosting, offers the benefits of a dedicated server including admin access and dedicated IP addresses, but at a much lower price. Rather than the hosting company having one server per client, they have set up a server with a larger storage capacity that is then divided into virtual servers. Users share a server, but because each virtual dedicated server is effectively isolated from other accounts, the user has full control over the server space.

Virtual private servers, VPS, allow hosting providers to offer virtual dedicated servers based on the concept of partitions on mainframes that allow each division to function as a virtual standalone server dedicated to a single customer. To ensure high and reliable performance for all accounts, server boxes are partitioned in such a way that each virtual dedicated server operates almost entirely independently of the other accounts that share the server space. Virtualization technology allows the resources of a single physical server to be efficiently divided into multiple virtual servers. Virtualization completely isolates each server so any issues adversely effecting one server will have no impact on neighbouring servers.

So lets put this into layman’s terms. The concept of APV is similar to dividing or partitioning the hard drive on your computer into several virtual hard drives and giving each section it’s own drive name, such as G Drive, H Drive and so on. Virtual Dedicated hosting is not the same as Shared Hosting as each user feels as if they are alone on the server. Shared Hosting has many websites on one server or drive just as a D drive. Virtual Dedicated hosting may still have several websites on one computer, but each website is on it’s own section such as Website 1 is on D drive, Website 2 is on E drive, Website 3 is on F drive, Website 4 is on G drive, and so on. Each user will have root access to only their own virtual space.

Most VPS Hosting provides full administrator privileges and allows the user to install any software, host unlimited domains, create unlimited databases, and tailor their environment to fit their exact requirements. VPS gives you the control you expect from a dedicated server without the high cost of a dedicated server. As well, virtual dedicated server plans feature very high performance and available disk space and bandwidth.

Virtual dedicated servers offer many of the capabilities and features of dedicated servers, including admin or root access and the dedicated IP addresses. However, as a virtual dedicated server is, indeed, virtually dedicated, each user does share the server space with a small number of other customers, but the key here is the phrase “small number”. A VPS will never have the hundreds of websites sharing resources. Instead, each virtual dedicated server is effectively isolated from other accounts on the server and each user has full control over their server space. This means that with a virtual dedicated server, you will enjoy consistent, high performance, even when usage peaks on the main server.

Virtual dedicated servers are particularly useful for companies and individuals that run higher-traffic Web sites or complex applications and thus need the bandwidth, consistent performance, and flexibility of a virtual dedicated server.

Co-Located Web Hosting

A slightly different format of dedicated server hosting is the Co-located Web Hosting Plan or Collocation Plans. Collocation means "co-location". This solution lets you place or locate your own web server on the premises or locations of a service provider. It is pretty much the same as running your own server in your own office, only that it is located at a place better designed for it. The hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. They plug your server into their existing network and power systems and become responsible for ensuring their network is always available, while you are only responsible for the support and maintenance of your server.

Thus you, the user, purchase the hardware, software, and the actual server. However, rather than setting this computer up at your location where you are responsible for it’s maintenance, when you use a co-location plan your server is monitored and connected to the web at a third party data center. This facility has been designed with resources of a secure cage or cabinet, regulated power sources, dedicated Internet connections, security and 24/7 support.

You are at a stage when you have worked hard to create a web presence and your e-business cannot afford any costly downtime. Whether you are creating a corporate presence, an e-business site or an extranet, uptime is of utmost importance. Co-located web hosting services enables you to focus on your core competency while they provide highly trained technical resources and a secure, redundant environment for your multimedia, corporate intranet/extranet, and e-commerce applications.

These co-location data centers offer their clients a secure facility to physically house their hardware and equipment. This in turn reduces the risk to the client of having to set up this server in his or her own office or warehouse where there is a greater potential for fire, theft or vandalism.

All servers and applications are protected with redundant HVAC air filtration, fire suppression systems, uninterrupted power supply protection and are served by a dedicated team of diesel generators. Internet connectivity is usually provided by fibre optic line in conjunction with a high-availability, fault-tolerant and redundant router structure that offers fail-over to wireless if landlines are compromised. Some data centers even advertise that in the event of power loss, their facility has sufficient on-site fuel for seven (7) days of continuous operation.

With the risk of physical down time reduced drastically, you can rest knowing your website will always be accessible. You also have the most control of your server - not only do you, the owner, choose what to put on your server, but what technology will be hardwired to the physical machine itself. Frequent clients of co-located services are web-hosting providers, because they want 100% control and ownership of their servers. Co-located services are for companies or individuals in need of mission-critical hosting operations. Co-located web hosting prices are not usually based on specific pricing plans as the prices vary greatly on each individual client's needs and are usually based on usage and specific requirement.

A co-located solution is perfect for businesses that require a large amount of bandwidth and storage, high security and not down time. This is the most powerful and very expensive type of the web hosting service. It definitely requires much the owner has higher technical skills as it is harder to configure and debug and having physical access to your server may be the only issue. Most time, the data center provides only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server and little or no support directly for the server so most time, you will have to supply your own administrator to visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes.

Unmanaged Dedicated Hosting

Another type of Dedicated hosting is the Self-Managed or Unmanaged Dedicated Hosting plan. This is almost identical to a Co-location Plan and is usually the least expensive for Dedicated plans. The main difference is that you lease a server from the host and do not own it outright. The user has full administrative access to the box, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated box.

The data center will offer some very limited support, however, support is typically provided only in general terms and so it is crucial that you discuss with the host what the specifics are for the support they will provide before you sign on the dotted line.

This type is service is usually great for gaming servers pr hobbyist servers, but serious businesses usually require a more responsive and expert level of support.

Managed Dedicated Hosting

A Managed Dedicated Hosting plan is also similar to a Co-location Plan. The user leases a server from the host and has the data center provide a great level of support and maintenance. This maintenance typically includes services such as server uptime monitoring, a hardware warranty and security patch updates.

The user has their own Web server but is not allowed full control over it such as root access for Linux or 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.

So again, be sure that your managed dedicated host is specific about its managed services so that it does not disguise an unmanaged dedicated offering as a managed dedicated server. This has been known to happen, which is why it is important to do your homework and ask the right questions.

Reseller Web Hosting

A Reseller Web Hosting plan allows the client to become web hosts themselves. Reselling, or reseller web hosting, is selling web hosting to your customers under your own brand while the web hosting is actually provided by a different larger company. This original larger hosting company is selling you, their client, a large web hosting account, which you then have the authorization to divide into smaller sections to sell to your clients.

Resellers could function, for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who they are affiliated with as a provider. Resellers' accounts may vary tremendously in size and they may even have their own virtual dedicated server or a collocated server.

A reseller is a middleman who sells web space on somebody else's server. Reselling plans vary greatly and fall into the several categories:

• Agent: The reseller acts as an agent for the web hosting company. The reseller advertises the service as if they are with the actual web hosting company. Customers will buy directly from the web hosting company and the reseller agent will receive a commission if the new customers mention the reseller's name.
  
  
• Marketer: The reseller acts as a marketer for the web hosting company. The reseller advertises the service as if they are with the actual web hosting company. Customers buy the service from the reseller but all further contact they have is directly with the web hosting company.
  

• Separate Company: The reseller appears to be a web hosting company in their own right, handling sales and support but 'rebadges' somebody else's service. Customer buys web space from the reseller who then buys the web space (at a lower price) from the actual web hosting company. However, customers always contact the reseller directly for any support. A variation of this plan is one where the actual web hosting company in the reseller’s name invoices the customers and the reseller receives a commission from the web host. The reseller usually provides support in order to keep up the pretense that the reseller is a web hosting company in his own right. In either of these scenarios, the reseller purchases the web space after they have made a sale to a new customer.
  
  
• Separate Company with Inventory: The reseller purchases a large amount of web space and bandwidth from the web hosting company and then carve that into individual chunks of space/bandwidth for sale to their customers. The reseller will appear to be a web hosting company and customers will contact the reseller for support. This scenario, the reseller pre-purchases the web space with the hopes of reselling it.

Let’s consider an example of how reselling works. You purchase a reseller web-hosting package with 2,000 MB disk space and 2,000 MB bandwidth for $15.00 a month. You then break this into 20 separate accounts with 100 MB disk space and 100 MB bandwidth each. You then sell these smaller packages to your customers via your branded website. Eventually you sell each of these packages for $10.00 dollars a month, thus making you $200.00. Subtracting your only cost, the reseller web hosting package of $15.00 a month, your total profit would be $185.00 a month. So, too summarize, reseller web hosting is the act of buying a large web-hosting plan or dedicated server and then breaking it into smaller parts to resell to your clients. This definition is rather simple but you now understand the basic meaning.

If choosing this type of web hosting, compare the various hosting companies that provide this option. A good Reseller Plan will give you ability to host unlimited sites and allow you to create your own packages and prices. Being a reseller should be completely anonymous allowing you to act as an independent hosting company and your customers won't know that you are reselling hosting unless you tell them. Make sure that the web host provides supports for at least 20 languages and provides multiple scripts that can be installed instantly such as fantastic. Many reseller hosting plans allow you to keep 100% of the money you collect. Make sure you do your research before choosing one company.

Clustered Hosting

Clustered hosting is technology that has been designed to eliminate the problems inherent with typical shared hosting infrastructures. This technology provides customers with a “clustered” handling of security, load balancing, and necessary website resources. A clustered hosting platform is data-driven, which means that no human interaction is needed to provision a new account to the platform.

Clustered hosting "virtualizes" the resources beyond the limits of one physical server, and as a result, a website is not limited to one server. They share the processing power of many servers and their applications are distributed in real-time. This means that they can purchase as much computing power as they want from a virtually inexhaustible source, since even the largest customer never consumes more than a fraction of a percent of the total server pool. Customer account changes (to add new resources or change settings) are propagated immediately to every server in the cluster. This is different from typical shared hosting that usually require a change to a configuration file that becomes live after the server is rebooted during off hours, or are pushed on a cyclic basis every few hours.

Security is a fundamental feature of clustered hosting, not an afterthought. There are multiple tiers of security protections, including intelligent routing, redundant switching fabric, and built in firewall and proxy technology, are integrated into the clustered hosting platform. Clustered hosting protects against both internal attacks common to shared platforms, as well as denial of service and other external types of attacks targeting Web servers.

In a typical hosting environment, the security layer is usually not integrated in the platform. The stock solutions used for shared hosting do not solve core issues around integrating security between the application and the operating system. At best, most typical hosts will implement a firewall solution, and weaknesses inherent with the operating system will remain exploitable to those that penetrate the firewall.

Clustered hosting network layer protections employ intelligent routing, redundant switching fabric and built in firewall and proxy technology. Clustered hosting provides considerable advantages over traditional hosting architectures in mitigating denial-of-service attacks and other network attacks because such attacks can be dispersed over a large pool of servers, and if individual hardware components are impacted by such attacks, they automatically fall out of traffic handling during the attack.

Clustered hosting also places controls and protections on scripts. A poorly written script can cripple a server; while clustered hosting secures and assigns script processes to individual accounts by isolating script processes with our patented ‘Virtual Domain Environment’, so a script with loops and critical flaws will only impact the performance of the site it is included on.

Traffic is dynamically load-balanced across many Web servers using clustered hosting as well, so the impact of an increased load is diluted. Additional servers can be added to the cluster with no impact on active customers. Clustering ensures that Web servers are available to handle huge spikes in traffic.

There are definite benefits to using cluster hosting. Most clients see higher level performance as the virtually inexhaustible resources of clustered hosting provides a greater computing capacity than when you share these resources and a server may become overloaded with accounts. Reliability is increased as your site will never be affected by other sites on the same server. We’ve already discussed the much added security you receive with this plan ad one you control access to you account. Finally, for most, the clustered hosting plan provides the benefits of a dedicated server at more affordable prices, often not much more that shared hosting costs.

Basically, I sum up Cluster hosting as a plan that offers multiple servers hosting the same content for the purpose of better resource utilization. I recognize that this is not a type of hosting that the average small business will need but that I’m sure my banking institution utilizes. I won’t even begin to try to explain this all in laymen’s terms because I can’t. Most of what I have learned about this type of hosting I learned at From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. If you need the technical details, I’ll refer you to them.

Grid Hosting

Grid hosting is a new term to me so I went to my favorite resource. According to Wikipedia Grid computing is an emerging computer model, which provides the ability to “perform higher throughput computing by taking advantage of many networked computers to model a virtual computer architecture that is able to distribute process execution across a parallel infrastructure”.

Grid hosting is a relatively new web hosting buzz. This form of distributed hosting is when a server cluster acts like a grid and is composed of multiple nodes. Being highly fault tolerant, this system is breaking new grounds when it comes to the network stability factor.

A Grid computer system uses the resources of many separate machines connected by a intranet or Internet network and offers the ability to perform computations on large data sets, by breaking them down into many smaller ones. It models a parallel division of labour between processes and enables the system to perform many more computations at once than would be possible on a single server.

Grid server environment does require a secure resource control, reliable network and service quality in order to be sustainable. A grid hosting model means that you have an independent, self-contained grid deployments run within isolated containers on shared resource provider sites. Websites and hosted grids interact via an underlying resource control plane to manage a dynamic binding of computational resources to containers.

The objective of the web hosts is to build server clusters and to bring the advantages of enterprise-level infrastructure to shared hosting services.

Until now, businesses, developers, resellers and individuals have been forced to rely on the specific, single server approach to hosting and all of its limitations. Complex, load-balanced hosting environments have only been available to those with the requisite IT budgets. The emergence of grid hosting has removed this barrier, bringing unsurpassed performance at a price point usually associated with single server environments. With grid architecture, servers become applications that are freed from their underlying hardware and able to harness the combined power of ALL hardware on the grid in a uniform, scalable and load-balanced environment.

"Anyone who has experienced data loss, extended downtime or service degradation can tell you about the limitations of traditional hosting technology," said Steve Harwood, president and CEO of NetLab. "NetLab was created in order to provide a next-generation solution to these and other drawbacks and do so in a way that is scalable and affordable for a wide range of users."

So what make grid hosting so special? What causes it to stand out in the outdated world of traditional shared hosting?

Well, first there is the high availability grid hosting provides as the virtualization and storage mirroring allows the grid to withstand multiple hardware failures with no impact on uptime or data integrity. Second, we have unlimited capacity as additional capacity can be added by simply adding more servers to the grid, thus eliminating performance bottlenecks common in single server hosting environments. Third, it provides scalability whereby users can scale from a fraction of a server up to a full server with on-demand burstable scaling. Lastly, it is vendor neutral. That means it is designed to be completely compatible with existing operating systems, middleware and Web applications. Billions of lines of tried and true infrastructure software, middleware and application code can be used unaltered.

Grid hosting is something we will all be encountering many times over in the years ahead. It is a definite part of our futures.

Application Specific Hosting

Application-specific hosting is hosting that is provided for just one specific purpose and are designed to host a complete website. Usually this type of hosting is provided by someone who already has a website and they will host something for you on their website, either for free or for a fee. Let’s briefly look at some of these types of hosting, knowing that this is by no means an exhaustive list.

Blog Hosting

A blog is your easy-to-use web site, where you can quickly post thoughts, interact with people, and more usually all for FREE. Its the latest rage on the Internet Everyone has a blog!
Every blog is created with some form of weblog software (also called blog software or blogware) is a category of software which consists of a specialized form of content management systems specifically designed for creating and maintaining weblogs. Although people or business with existing websites can use one of the many weblog applications that are available for users to download and install on their own systems by uploading it to wherever their site is hosted, millions of people are writing blogs who do not own a website.

Most weblog applications have features such as facilitating authoring and editing of blog posts or articles, various linking and web syndication features, and the ability to easily publish the blog to the world wide web.

Many weblog applications allow the user to define static pages of content, which can often be placed into a hierarchy or tree. Pages differ from blog posts in that the content is largely static and not time related. Pages are often used to present information about the blog and its author. Extensive use of pages can result in a blog that looks more like a website.

There are hundreds of web sites available for the beginner or experienced blogger to use. It is a great way to stay connected with family, friends, clients, customers and the rest of the world. The blogger has control over the text that is uploaded to the blog, and depending on the software or the blog website that is used, there is usually some control over the design and layout of the blog. The blogger can add more content, edit the content or even delete it. It is used as a way of exchanging information. Engaging in a discussion, or, if you get blog address private, a place to record your most private inner thoughts. The blog that you are reading is hosted on a blog website, one of many that I have.

Guild Hosting

A guild hosting or clan hosting service is a specialized type of web hosting service designed to support online gaming communities, generally referred to as guilds or clans. They vary from game server hosting in that the focus of such companies is to provide applications and communication tools outside of the gaming environments themselves.

The services typically offered by such a service include 1) a public and/or private forums for members to communicate with each other, or other tools for communications such as instant messaging or chat servers; 2) tools for tracking the roster of characters that a player might have in an MMORPG; 3) an application for scheduling and organizing raids, tournaments and other gaming events; and 4) applications for tracking treasure, items, or points accrued toward redeeming treasure.

Image Hosting

An image hosting service allows individuals to upload images to an Internet website. The image host will then store the image onto its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view that image. Because many users do not have personal web space, either as a paid service, or through an ISP offering, Image Hosting services have become massively popular as the demand for hosting services increases. With the explosion of the popularity of blogs, forums, auctions, and other interactive pages, image-hosting services have become extremely popular among end users.

Typically image hosting websites provide an upload interface such as a form in which you specify the location of an image file on your local computer file system by using a browse button. After pressing a “Submit” button the file is uploaded to the image host’s server. Some image hosts allow you to specify multiple files at once, in this form, or the ability to upload one ZIP file containing multiple images. Additionally, some hosts allow FTP access, where single or multiple files can be uploaded in one session using FTP software or an FTP-capable browser.

After this process, your image is hosted on their server. Typically this means it is available on the web and to the public. Now you will be able to make inline links to the hosted image, or to embed it on other websites by linking to it with HTML code or linking to it with Bbcode. Often a clickable thumbnail is also linked to the full image

The image host will normally put restrictions on the maximum image size allowed, or the maximum space or bandwidth allowed per user, especially if it is a free service. Due to bandwidth costs, free services usually offer relatively modest size limits per image when compared to paid services, but allow users to hotlinking their images. If you need to host large images or a large number of images, you might want to consider purchasing image hosting services or purchasing webhosting services, as then there are fewer, if any, restriction put on you.

Video Hosting

A video hosting service, also called a video sharing video service, allows individuals to uplink video clips to an Internet website. The video host will then store the video on its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view that video. Because many users do not have personal web space, either as a paid service, or through an ISP offering, video hosting services are becoming increasingly popular, especially with the explosion in popularity of blogs, forums, and other interactive pages. The website, mainly used as the video hosting service, is usually said the video sharing website.

The mass market for camera phones has increased the supply of user-generated video. Traditional methods of personal video distribution, such as making a DVD to show to friends at home, are unsuited to the low resolution and high volume of camera phone clips. In contrast, current broadband Internet connections are well suited to serving the quality of video shot on mobile phones. Most people do not own web servers, and this has created demand for user-generated video content hosting, which the likes of YouTube are catering to.

Email Hosting

An e-mail hosting service is an Internet hosting service that runs ye-mail servers. E-mail hosting services usually offer premium e-mail at a cost as opposed to advertising supported free e-mail or free webmail. E-mail hosting services thus differ from typical end-user e-mail providers such as webmail sites. They cater mostly to demanding e-mail users and Small and Mid Size businesses that do not want to administer their own e-mail server. E-mail hosting providers allow for premium e-mail services along with custom configurations, large number of accounts and use of own domain name.

Most e-mail hosting providers offer advanced premium e-mail solutions hosted on dedicated custom e-mail platforms. The technology and offering of different e-mail hosting providers can therefore vary towards different needs. E-mail offered by most webhosting companies is usually more basic standardized POP3 based e-mail and webmail based on open source webmail applications like Horde or Squirrelmail. Mostly all webhosting providers offer standard basic e-mail while not all e-mail hosting providers offer webhosting.

File Hosting

A file hosting service, online file storage service, or online media center as they are also referred to, is an Internet hosting service specifically designed to host static content, typically large files that are not web pages. Typically they host allow you web and FTP access and your account can be optimized for serving many users as is implied by the term "hosting" or be optimized for single-user storage such as a back up "storage" of your important files and document.

Personal file storage services are aimed at private individuals, offering a sort of "network storage" for personal backup, file access, or file distribution. Users can upload their files and share them publicly or keep them password-protected.

Prior to the advent of personal file hosting and storage services, off-site backup services were not typically affordable for individual and SOHO computer users.