Top

Dedicated Web Hosting

July 4, 2008

Dedicated web hosting is one of three primary web hosting methods. Other types of hosting include virtual hosting, sometimes called shared hosting, which is the most common web hosting method; and clustered web hosting which uses a group of servers that are integrated in order to increase performance and redundancy for a web hosting customer who has unique needs. There are definite advantages and disadvantages to the various web hosting methods. Dedicated web hosting is a hosting method that many internet-based businesses find to be extremely advantageous.

Dedicated hosting provides the client with a customized, first-class web server. Dedicated hosting is usually for websites that require more system resources as well as bigger bandwidth. With this need for resources, an entire server dedicated to the needs of the website is more practical.

You can expect your service to be much more reliable due to the fact that with dedicated server you do not share space with others. With shared hosting you may share space with 10 or even 100 other users. Not only do you share the hosting space but data transfer as well. If your average use of data transfer becomes more that 10% of allowed monthly transfer, you may be politely asked to close your account. While with dedicated hosting you are allowed to increase your data transfer if needed.

Aside from flexibility and control, there are other advantages of having dedicated web hosting. Because you are the only customer using the server, you don’t share resources such as hard drive space, processing speed, bandwidth and applications, so dedicated web hosting can be a lot more efficient and can provide a lot more space and speed of processing for your website, database and email applications. The disadvantage of dedicated web hosting as compared to virtual web hosting is that the cost of dedicated web hosting is higher than that of shared hosting.

As no one else accesses your server you can be assured of a greater security, unless of course you are your own enemy. With dedicated web hosting solution you will have a dedicated or some call it “static” IP address. With shared hosting you share IP address with other users and traffic to your website is directed by the server after examining the “host header”. With dedicated server you can access your site with your IP address.

Conversely, a server providing shared web hosting contains multiple websites on the same computer but they all have the same IP address. If you were to type in an IP address associated with a shared server, you’d get an error message or possibly would be redirected to the hosting company’s main web site. So domain names are mandatory for websites hosted on shared servers as they are the only way to access those web sites - they cannot be accessed by an IP address alone as they can be with dedicated web hosting.

Related Articles

Comments

Got something to say?





Bottom