Categories of the different types of web-hosting providers - By: Jain Manish

In the least expensive, or low-end, category are shared servers. As their name implies, these are computer systems that are shared by more than one web site, and hence are appropriate for small, simple, low-traffic sites.

Next on the list are dedicated servers. These are nearly identical to shared servers with the obvious exception that they're not shared but rather dedicated to a single web site or to multiple web sites owned and controlled by the same business entity. As compared to shared servers, dedicated servers offer more capacity, flexibility, and better security, but at a higher price.

The next category is a substantial step away from the previous categories, but in some ways it's a step backward. Instead of offering more support that is available from shared- and dedicated-server web-hosting services, colocation is a rather bare-bones service that merely houses servers in a data center and connects those servers to the Internet. It doesn't include the server hardware or any of the software and services that are necessary to operate a web site. Colocation by itself is aimed at customers who want to supply and manage their own web-site hardware and software, but who don't want to provide their own physical facilities and may not want to manage their links to the Internet.

In the early days of the web, any organization that was building a web site large enough to be located at a colocation service was also large enough to hire its own staff to manage that web site around the clock. Such companies had little choice, since there were no vendors offering management services for large-scale sites, and the only way these companies could obtain the expertise necessary to run such a web site was to hire the system administrators, database administrators, and network engineers that knew how to do it.

Over time, two changes occurred. First, those system administrators, database administrators (DBAs), and network engineers who knew how to run large web sites became harder and harder to find out and more and more expensive when they could be found. Second, a new subgroup called managed service providers (MSPs) - fourth and final category - appeared in 1997 to address the huge gap between the bare bones offerings of colocation services and the needs of owners of major web sites. Colocation services and MSPs have developed truly symbiotic relationships in which one could not succeed without the other, and the combination of these two services is often the best choice for high-end web sites.

ASPs, or Application Service Providers, are not included here as they provide application services. For example, an ASP might offer hosting of enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications such as manufacturing, order entry, warehousing, accounting, and human resources developed by software vendors such as PeopleSoft, SAP, and Oracle. In these cases, the hosting isn't for the public WWW, but rather for corporate intranets.

The distinction between web-hosting services, MSPs, and ASPs isn't simply a matter of experience with public Internet versus corporate intranets, but rather the additional skills that web-hosting services and MSPs have that go far beyond application packages. Some ASPs offer hosting of web-based applications, but the expertise of these companies tends to be in applications such as specific third-party e-commerce packages, not in supporting technologies such as Internet connectivity, DNS, security, firewalls, web servers, and operating systems.

About the Author

Manish Jain with Hosting24Hour.com that is providing the linux web hosting services. Choose the cheap web hosting services From hosting24hour.com.

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