There certainly are people out there that don't know what web hosting is really about. So, first the basics. Web hosting, or web hosting services as it is also called, is a type of Internet hosting service that provides space and other facilities for websites. Every website needs to store its information, images, video, sounds and so on, in other words all its content, to a place that the World Wide Web (the www. that we type in our browsers) can access. The web hosts provide space, Internet connectivity and other facilities for their clients, on servers that they own.

Now that the general idea of web hosting is explained, lets proceed to explain what dedicated server hosting is.

Dedicated servers are mainly used, because using shared web-hosting services has its limitations. The kind of people using dedicated servers are usually sites with a large number of visitors or companies that want to have full control of every aspect of their servers and also need to store a lot of information in large databases.

So, dedicated server hosting is a type of web site hosting where the client doesn't share the server with anyone else. It leases, from the provider, the whole server for itself. This type of hosting is more reliable and more flexible than the shared hosting, because you have full control over the server. This means that you can make your own decisions regarding which operating system to use, whether it will be a dedicated Linux server or a dedicated Windows server, what hardware configuration you will use, and so on. The hosting company can usually provide the administration or management of the server.

Depending on how much money you want to spend, you can choose the type of services and connectivity that you desire. The prices range from 50-100$ to thousands per month, depending on different options and services that the web hosting companies provide. The budget providers will surely be cheaper but they generally use a single upstream provider. If this fails your server will go down too. At the other end of the market, there are the high quality providers who definitely charge more but, use multiple quality uplinks, assuring that in the event one of them goes down your server will still work fine. The high quality hosts usually have improved routes to their locations also.

As previously mentioned, most of the dedicated server hosts provide administrative maintenance of the operating system for their clients. The management can include upgrades, security patches and updates, adding or deleting users and domains, and special programming requirements. Before making the decision to go for a dedicated server package for your company, you have to bear in mind that it still has limitations, unfortunately. Some of the dedicated server providers do not allow IRC (Internet Relay Chat IRC is a form of real-time Internet chat). This could be because they are afraid of DoS (denial-of-service) attacks against the provider that may lead to overwhelming their network and thus resulting in a poor quality for all their customers. So if this is important to your business, best to ask a specific question.

So, now that you are a little better informed about dedicated server hosting the only question left unanswered is "Do you need it for your site?"

If you just want to host a personal homepage, then clearly you don't require one. But if, for example, you have large mailing database then you will run into restrictions on sending mail from a shared server, and a dedicated server may be a suitable option. Those of you contemplating a large network of multiple sites could also thank yourself for choosing that route. Of course our friends in the adult community would find it very difficult to maintain a site with the kind of traffic that these sites generate. A dedicated server is the only option here. As the traffic to your site increases pay close attention to the amount of failed requests for pages (in the stats section of your control panel) this is an early sign that the shared server you are currently on is reaching capacity.

Shared servers are not a cheap option, but they allow unparalleled control over your online business and the added flexibility could be the spark that your company needs.