A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that provides individuals, organizations and users with online systems for storing information, images, video, or other content accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their 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 servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called colocation.



Types of hosting:

1. A free web hosting service is a web hosting service that is free, usually advertisement-supported and of limited functionality. Free web hosts will either provide a subdomain (yourname.example.com) (e.g. 50megs, Byethost, Netfirms) or a directory (www.example.com/~yourname) (e.g. GeoCities). In contrast, paid web hosts will usually provide a Second-level domain along with the hosting (www.yourname.com). Some free hosts do allow use of separately-purchased domains. Rarely, a free host may also operate as a domain name registrar, but their registry services are usually more expensive than others.

A few free web hosts have a basic package for free (e.g. Freewebs), and enhanced packages (with more features) for a cost. This allows users to try the service for an initial trial (see how it performs compared to other hosts), and then upgrade when (and if) needed.

2. A shared web hosting service or virtual hosting service is a form of web hosting service where more than one instance of the same web service is hosted on a single physical server. This is generally the most economical option for hosting as many people share the overall cost of server maintenance.

3. Reseller hosting is a form of web hosting wherein the account owner may split up their alloted hard drive space and bandwidth and resell web hosting. Typically, resellers are web consultants including web designers, web developers, or system integration company who resell the web hosting as an add-on service to complement their other range of services. Commonly, resellers can receive 50 percent or more discount on the price of a reseller hosting account from the web hosting provider. Resellers are also allowed to decide their own pricing structure and even establish their own branding. In other words, a reseller can set up its web hosting company on the Internet and start selling web hosting plans under its own brand name.

Reseller hosting generally requires little knowledge of web hosting services in order to get started. Reseller hosts are generally not responsible for maintaining web server services or other maintenance related tasks. To the reseller's customers, the reseller is the "web hosting provider." In cases when technical problems such as server down and access problem arise, this job is held by the owner of the dedicated server in which the reseller host is hosted.

4. Virtual private servers or Virtual dedicated servers are a form of virtualization that split a single physical server into multiple virtual servers. The practice of partitioning a single server so that it appears as multiple servers has long been common practice in mainframe computers, but has seen a resurgence lately with the development of software and technologies such as VMware, Xen, FreeBSD Jail, User-mode Linux, Linux-VServer, FreeVPS, OpenVZ, and Virtuozzo.

5. A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting where the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. 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 return on investment. Dedicated servers are most often housed in data centers, similar to colocation facilities, providing redundant power sources and HVAC systems. In contrast to colocation, a dedicated hosting service provides system administration and owns the server itself.

6. A colocation centre ("colo") or carrier hotel is a type of data center where [a] multiple telecommunications or network service providers locate their connections adjacent at the physical layer to each other's networks (points of presence) and [b] users of these services locate network, server and storage gear and interconnect to network service provider(s) with a minimum of cost and complexity.

Increasingly organizations are recognizing the benefits of colocating their mission-critical equipment within a data centre. Colocation is becoming popular because of the time and cost savings a company can realize as result of using shared data centre infrastructure. Significant benefits of scale (large power and mechanical systems) result in large colocation facilities, typically 50,000 to 100,000 feet. With IT and communications facilities in safe, secure hands, telecommunications, internet, ASP and content providers, as well as enterprises, enjoy less latency and the freedom to focus on their core business.

Additionally, customers reduce their traffic back-haul costs and free up their internal networks for other uses. Moreover, by outsourcing network traffic to a colocation service provider with greater bandwidth capacity, web site access speeds should improve considerably.

7. Clustered hosting technology is 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 architectures that usually require changes 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.

Multiple tiers of security are integrated into the clustered hosting platform. 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.

Ankit Talwar - Web Designer