What goes into Web Hosting

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There are many things that go into running a successful web hosting business. The web host needs a reliable internet connection with plenty of bandwidth. They need a secure environment to house and store all their equipment. There a numerous components that are needed, and almost all of them are related to the web server.

What exactly is a webserver?
The term web server has two meanings. A web server is the computer that stores all the data for a website. The other is the actual software that runs on the computer which processes all the requests from users web browsers and returns a web page. Often used hand in hand, these two technologies are very different. So one should always clarify which web server they are talking about and whether they are referring to the machine or the software running to serve pages.

The Web Server Applications
Applications on the web server help the actual hardware serve up web pages to visitors browsers requiring them such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. The majority of these requests come through the HTTP protocol, and therefore this type of application is referred to as HTTP server. Whilst browsing on the internet, your browser makes many requests to HTTP servers. A request it transmitted to the remote computer, which then processes your request and tries to locate the page your browser is requesting. If the server fails, an error is sent back, the most common being 404 file not found.

Common Web Servers
The most commonly used server is the Apache HTTP server, it is the most installed web server in the world claiming almost 65% market share. The reason for this is that it is extremely fast, easy to deploy on many environment be it Linux, Windows, or even Os X. The other reason is that it is free. If you set it up on a Linux machine, you wont pay a cent towards the software on your system, which makes it very appealing to web hosts as they make use of many web servers. If each web server needed a copy of Windows Server 2008 you can imagine how expensive that will be, which also shows why so few web hosts in our list support any Microsoft environments.

The other competing web server is IIS (Internet Information Services) but it share in the market is slowly declining. It was developed by Microsoft, and is very stable. Though it is compatible with MySQL and other open-source technologies, IIS was designed to be integrated with Microsoft products such as ASP (Active Server Pages) and the SQL Server. Other web server applications exist but they are rarely used in comparison to Apache and IIS.

Using a Web Server off the Web
While primarily intended for the web hosting arena, web server applications can also be used for other purposes as well. For example, many techies have the Apache server installed on their Windows-based computers. This is great for someone who scripts custom programs for their own servers. Several developers find this method much easier than working on a remote server. So, if you have a powerful computer with a need to create PHP or ASP scripts, a web server like Apache or IIS could work wonders on your system.