In the previous article, you saw what a Web Server was, and understood the fundamental structure that makes up the Internet Architecture. In today’s article, we are going to discuss Shared Web Hosting. It is a technique that is very commonly used as a relatively inexpensive way for Business to host their websites, and yet have fairly decent qualities of Key Parameters.

Key Parameters consist of:

1. Uptime
2. Support
3. Number of Services, and
4. Bandwidth

What is Shared Hosting

Ever since the power of computers increased dramatically, it has become obvious that sometimes, the work that a computer doesn’t make full use of it’s capability. An example would be the latest laptop with 4GB RAM, and what not, being used for typing word documents.

Similarly, with Web Servers, most Web Sites do not handle the sort of Traffic that Google, or CNN’s Web Site gets. Consequently, even though a normal business Web Site requires reasonably high levels of Key Parameters, it is rather a waste to use a full dedicated, and costly Server for it.

Technology has enabled us to design a computer system in such a way, that it can handle multiple tasks simultaneously. An example, would be running Windows Media player, and playing Solitaire at the same time on your computer. You may not realize it, but (Unless your computer has two processors) the CPU, in order to handle the programs, is actually switching very fast between Media Player, and your game. The switching is so fast however, that you think that both programs are running simultaneously. In fact, most computers have dozens of programs that are running simultaneously, and each program thinks that it’s the only program that is running.

If that is not enough to make your head spin, here is what Powerful Servers can do. A single Server can be spilt in such way, that we can make it look as if multiple computers themselves are running! In reality, it’s the same computer, but using it’s vast resources in such way, that it can perform the
jobs of several computers at the same time. This is called partitioning a Server. This means, that for one Server, we have several effective Servers.

However, in Shared Hosting, the Servers are still not truly virtual. They do not have the appearance of each having their own hard disks, and being able to reboot independently of other Servers. That nifty piece of work belongs to the realm of Virtual Private Servers.

In Shared Hosting, what happens is, that each website, runs in it’s own
Partition, or space. The main Server is powerful enough to keep up that appearance. As mentioned earlier, it won’t be sufficient for very high Traffic Sites, but it gets the job done quite satisfactorily for most businesses.

Since multiple websites are sitting on one Server, it is the Provider’s responsibility to administer the overall system. Also, most providers allow their users to customize certain features of their private server. These administration activities, are done with the help of control panel software such as cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk etc.

This sort of hosting is very convenient for most businesses, because they don’t have the hassle of maintaining the Server like installing updates, taking Backups,installing Server Software, and the like.

There are essentially two types of Shared Hosting. Name Based, and IP based. Name Based, is where the main Server has the IP address, and each browser that connects to it, must also send which host it wants to connect to, since there are several hosts running on the same server. In IP based hosting, each host has it’s own IP address. The precise differences between the various types of shared hosting, is beyond the scope of this article.

So that is essentially, the basics of Shared Web Hosting. Being the most commonly used Hosting Service, there are a huge number of parties who supply this sort of Service, and you must find one that suits your needs. If this type of hosting does not fit your business needs, read our guide on dedicated web hosting .