The Internet Encyclopedia (Volume 3)

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702 WEBHOSTING

the very short spikes that occur when, say, an air condi-

tioner is turned on. Rather, the current must exceed 200

amperes for a certain period of time.

The computation of peak bandwidth from monthly

page views is not as exact as the computation of monthly

transfer because one Web site may deliver its page views

evenly over a 24-hour period, whereas another may tend

to be visited mostly during a narrower period of time dur-

ing the day. An approximation of 1 Mbps (one megabit per

second) of bandwidth for 200,000 page views per month

is a good rule of thumb.

COST

We have looked at Web-hosting service categories from

two perspectives: the traffic volumes they can handle and

the service components they offer. The final comparison

we will make is according to their costs, as illustrated in

Figure 4.

Thex-axis of Figure 4 indicates the total cost per month

for hardware and software of an operational Web site.

Note that the scale is logarithmic. The costs range from

less than $10 to over $1 million per month.

In order to make an apples-to-apples comparison, Fig-

ure 4 includes the monthly cost of hardware and software

it takes to run a Web site. Shared- and dedicated-server

vendors (and in some cases, MSPs) own the server hard-

ware and most of the software licenses. They rent or lease

those components to their customers—hence the inclu-

sion of these costs in the comparison. In the case of pure

colocation, however (i.e., without the addition of third-

party managed services), the customer must either own

the hardware and software or lease these components

through third parties. For colocation, therefore, the bud-

gets shown include either the monthly leasing costs of

these components or the equivalent depreciation or amor-

tization.

They-axis scale has no values or calibration points.

Instead it is a relative scale of features and services. Being

higher on the scale implies more features or a greater level

of service.

We have now looked at the four categories of Web-

hosting vendors from three perspectives: We have seen

how they vary according to the services they offer, by the

amount of Web site traffic they are each intended to han-

dle, and by cost. Next, we will examine each category in

detail.

SHARED AND DEDICATED SERVERS

Ashared server(also referred to as a virtual server) is a

single computer system on which a Web-hosting service

runs multiple small Web sites owned by separate cus-

tomers. The software for each Web site runs in avir-

tual operating environmentthat protects it from other

Web sites running on the same physical server, and vice

versa.

Shared servers are used for the vast majority of all

Web sites. Because these Web sites require relatively low

levels of computer resources, multiple sites—sometimes

thousands—can be run on a single server. This means,

in turn, that a shared-server hosting provider can offer

Web hosting for as little as $19.95 per month and still

make money. Low-cost shared-server hosting can be an

Features and Services

Cost per Month (Including Hardware and Software)

Shared

Servers Dedicated Servers

Colocation

Managed Services

$10 $100 $1,000 $10,000 $100,000 $1,000,000

Figure 4: Cost comparison of web-hosting service categories.