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I plan on adding a history of web hosting services, ways in which web hosting services are implemented, both legal and illegal, Security for web hosting services, and possibly technology used in web hosting services. Some companies offer free hosting for basic websites and

Here is an idea of what the sections of the article may look like after editing:

History

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Prior to the introduction of web hosting services, in order to host a website on the internet, an individual or company would need their own computer or server.[1] In 1991, restrictions on using the world wide web for commercial purposes was lifted[2], allowing companies to have a presence on the internet. The Commercial Internet Exchange Association (CIX) was formed that year with the goal of providing internet access without restrictions on what kind of traffic was being sent. Companies began to offer to host users websites on their own servers, without the client without needing to own the necessary infrastructure required to operate the website. The owners of the websites, also called webmasters would be able to create a website that would be hosted on the web hosting service's server and published to the web by the web hosting service. As the number of users on the world wide web grew, the need for companies, both large and small to have an online presence grew. By 1995, companies such as Geocities, Angelfire and Tripod were offering free hosting.[3] In 2006, Amazon Web Services launched[4]

Types of hosting

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Consumer

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Individuals can make use of Web Hosting Services establish a presence on the world wide web. Personal web sites, blogs and even online commerce are offered to the public by web hosting companies.

Home Server

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A Home server, usually a single machine placed in a private residence can be used to host one or more web sites from a usually consumer-grade broadband connection. These can be purpose-built machines or more commonly old PCs. Some ISPs actively attempt to block home servers by disallowing incoming requests to TCP port 80 of the user's connection and by refusing to provide static IP addresses. A common way to attain a reliable DNS host name is by creating an account with a dynamic DNS service. A dynamic DNS service will automatically change the IP address that a URL points to when the IP address changes.[5]

Business

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Many large companies that are not Internet service providers need to be permanently connected to the web to send email, files, etc. to other sites. The company may use the computer as a website host to provide details of their goods and services and facilities for online orders.

A complex site calls for a more comprehensive package that provides database support and application development platforms (e.g. ASP.NET, ColdFusion, Java EE, Perl/Plack, PHP or Ruby on Rails). These facilities allow customers to write or install scripts for applications like forums and content management. Also, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is typically used for websites that wish to keep the data transmitted more secure.

  • Shared web hosting service: one's website is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few sites to hundreds of websites. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU. The features available with this type of service can be quite basic and not flexible in terms of software and updates. Resellers often sell shared web hosting and web companies often have reseller accounts to provide hosting for clients.
  • Reseller web hosting: allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers could function, for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who they are affiliated with as a reseller. Resellers' accounts may vary tremendously in size: they may have their own virtual dedicated server to a colocated server. Many resellers provide a nearly identical service to their provider's shared hosting plan and provide the technical support themselves.
  • Virtual Dedicated Server: also known as a Virtual Private Server (VPS), divides server resources into virtual servers, where resources can be allocated in a way that does not directly reflect the underlying hardware. VPS will often be allocated resources based on a one server to many VPSs relationship, however virtualisation may be done for a number of reasons, including the ability to move a VPS container between servers. The users may have root access to their own virtual space. Customers are sometimes responsible for patching and maintaining the server (unmanaged server) or the VPS provider may provide server admin tasks for the customer (managed server).
  • Dedicated hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it (user has root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, the user typically does not own the server. One type of dedicated hosting is self-managed or unmanaged. This is usually the least expensive for dedicated plans. The user has full administrative access to the server, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated server.
  • Managed hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server but is not allowed full control over it (user is denied root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, they are allowed to manage their data via FTP or other remote management tools. The user is disallowed full control so that the provider can guarantee quality of service by not allowing the user to modify the server or potentially create configuration problems. The user typically does not own the server. The server is leased to the client.
  • Colocation web hosting service: similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the colo server; the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of web hosting service. In most cases, the colocation provider may provide little to no support directly for their client's machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. In most cases for colo, the client would have his own administrator visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes. Formerly, many colocation providers would accept any system configuration for hosting, even ones housed in desktop-style minitower cases, but most hosts now require rack mount enclosures and standard system configurations.
  • Cloud hosting: is a new type of hosting platform that allows customers powerful, scalable and reliable hosting based on clustered load-balanced servers and utility billing. A cloud hosted website may be more reliable than alternatives since other computers in the cloud can compensate when a single piece of hardware goes down. Also, local power disruptions or even natural disasters are less problematic for cloud hosted sites, as cloud hosting is decentralized. Cloud hosting also allows providers to charge users only for resources consumed by the user, rather than a flat fee for the amount the user expects they will use, or a fixed cost upfront hardware investment. Alternatively, the lack of centralization may give users less control on where their data is located which could be a problem for users with data security or privacy concerns.
  • Clustered hosting: having multiple servers hosting the same content for better resource utilization. Clustered servers are a perfect solution for high-availability dedicated hosting, or creating a scalable web hosting solution. A cluster may separate web serving from database hosting capability. (Usually, web hosts use clustered hosting for their shared hosting plans, as there are multiple benefits to the mass managing of clients).[6]
  • Grid hosting: this form of distributed hosting is when a server cluster acts like a grid and is composed of multiple nodes.

Some specific types of hosting provided by web host service providers:

Technology

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Host management

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Multiple racks of servers

The host may also provide an interface or control panel for managing the Web server and installing scripts, as well as other modules and service applications like e-mail. A web server that does not use a control panel for managing the hosting account, is often referred to as a "headless" server. Some hosts specialize in certain software or services (e.g. e-commerce, blogs, etc.).

Reliability and uptime

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The availability of a website is measured by the percentage of a year in which the website is publicly accessible and reachable via the Internet. This is different from measuring the uptime of a system. Uptime refers to the system itself being online. Uptime does not take into account being able to reach it as in the event of a network outage.[citation needed] A hosting provider’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) may include a certain amount of scheduled downtime per year in order to perform maintenance on the systems. This scheduled downtime is often excluded from the SLA timeframe, and needs to be subtracted from the Total Time when availability is calculated. Depending on the wording of an SLA, if the availability of a system drops below that in the signed SLA, a hosting provider often will provide a partial refund for time lost. How downtime is determined changes from provider to provider, therefore reading the SLA is imperative.[7] Not all providers release uptime statistics.[8] Most hosting providers will guarantee at least 99.9% uptime which will allow for 43m of downtime per month, or 8h 45m of downtime per year.

Security

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Because web hosting services host websites belonging to their customers, online security is an important concern. When a customer agrees to use a web hosting service, they are relinquishing control of the security of their site to the company that is hosting the site. The level of security that a web hosting service offers is extremely important to a prospective customer and can be a major consideration when considering which provider a customer may choose.[9]

Web hosting servers can be attacked by malicious users in different ways, including uploading malware or malicious code onto a hosted website. These attacks may be done for different reasons, including stealing credit card data, launching a Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS) or spamming.[10]

Some security measures that a web hosting service can take may include:

Practicing good habits with passwords

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Administrator accounts should avoid using passwords that are simple, or easy to guess.

Monitoring logs

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Reviewing server security logs can allow administrators to check for signs of behavior that is out of the ordinary.

See also

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Refrences

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  1. ^ "The history of web hosting". www.tibus.com. Retrieved 2016-10-08.
  2. ^ "The history of web hosting". www.tibus.com. Retrieved 2016-12-11.
  3. ^ "A History of Web Hosting [Infographic]". BizTech. 2012-02-24. Retrieved 2016-11-04.
  4. ^ "The History of Cloud Computing". Atlantic.Net. 2013-08-04. Retrieved 2016-11-04.
  5. ^ Han, I.; Park, Hong-Shik; Jeong, Youn-Kwae; Park, Kwang-Roh (February 2006). "An integrated home server for communication, broadcast reception, and home automation". IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics. 52 (1): 104–109. doi:10.1109/TCE.2006.1605033. ISSN 0098-3063.
  6. ^ Buyya, R.; Yeo, Chee Shin; Venugopal, S. (September 2008). "Market-Oriented Cloud Computing: Vision, Hype, and Reality for Delivering IT Services as Computing Utilities". 10th IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communications, 2008. HPCC '08: 5–13. doi:10.1109/HPCC.2008.172.
  7. ^ Dawson, Christian. "Why Uptime Guarantees are Ridiculous". Servint. Retrieved 7 October 2014. a good SLA will clearly state how uptime is defined and what you'll receive if the "uptime promise" is not met.
  8. ^ Vanvleet, Derek. "Google Apps vs. Office 365: What Does 99.9% Uptime Really Mean?". Cloud Sherpas. Retrieved 7 October 2014.
  9. ^ Schultz, Eugene. "Attackers hit Web hosting servers". Computers & Security. 22 (4): 273–283. doi:10.1016/s0167-4048(03)00402-4.
  10. ^ InstantShift. "A Guide to Web Hosting Security Issues and Prevention". InstantShift - Web Designers and Developers Daily Resource. Retrieved 2016-10-31.
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