In this article we'll discuss the very basics of the Web hosting business.
Web hosting is quite simply the service of preserving and displaying Web pages to the World Wide Web. The hosting company is the entity that allows individuals and businesses to show content on the Internet. The actual mechanics of web hosting can get quite complicated.
Internet service providers (ISPs) and Web hosting companies are not the same thing. If you need Internet access then you need an ISP. But in order to publish content on the Internet a Web hosting company will be a necessity. Many Internet service providers will give their customers a small amount of free hosting for a personal Web site. If you require a Web site for business purposes you'll definitely want a company that specializes in Web hosting only.
Serving Web pages is not quite as easy as it may sound. Web sites need to be operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. This puts an incredible amount of stress on both the people and the equipment that operate in a Web hosting environment.
To properly host a large number of websites expensive equipment is needed. High-end computers are required to meet the ongoing demands. These computers, or Web page 'servers', use large amounts of power and get very hot. Additional power is then required to cool the Web servers off. They also require special facilities that are kept clean and cool. Often times, data centers will have several large air conditioning units specifically to pump cold air onto the servers. It's also a wise choice to have industrial size backup generators in case anything was to happen to the power.
Connecting to a backbone provider is also needed to provide adequate transfer speed. These backbone providers, or network service providers, give the hosting company direct access to the Internet trunk lines. This access is sold by what is called bandwidth. Web hosting companies buy this bandwidth and then resell it to their customers. Bandwidth is simply the amount of information transmitted along a communications channel in a given period of time.
The backend structure of the Web hosting business is rather complicated. To balance the high operational costs Web hosting companies deal in volume. Web servers can present 1000's of Web sites per server. Adding everything up, there is a specific amount of money required to maintain a constantly running Web server. So each new site added to a server will decrease the overall cost per customer.
But, hosting too many Web sites on one server will start to decrease the speed and performance of the sites hosted on it. Then customers will experience the speed of their Web sites begin to slow down and might start to see general page errors when trying to load their site. Between high operational costs and server performance, Web hosting companies must maintain a balance.
Web sites must be running all the time. This increases the human costs beyond that of a normal business. The hosting company must maintain a staff on location at all times. Instead of just one 8 hour shift there are three 8 hour shifts. Weekends must be covered too. Usually though, off hours staff are there in a technical support capacity only.
In conclusion, many components must come together in order for Web sites to be viewable on the Internet. These different systems include computer hardware, software and networking. This combination together with the human component is what makes the Internet what it is today.
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