Dynamic DNS

Sometimes hosting a web site on your own private server at home may be a wise choice, particularly so on a low traffic server demanding no special hosting features.

Though not outstanding, present day broadband internet access offers a reasonable price vs. quality ratio, on the other hand entry level service usually doesn't provide a static IP address, instead they often change your IP address several times a week through DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) therefore making it difficult to reach your web site.

Domain name entries pointing at your server would have to be changed manually each time an IP address change occurred. Hosting your own DNS server would only turn things worse, moving the problem one level up towards the root DNS servers which take longer to refresh.

Dynamic DNS solves this huge problem transparently enabling client software on your server to interact with server software on the DNS server sending your new IP address whenever it changes so that the DNS server can update your domain on the fly. Dynamic DNS companies provide the client software you must run at your server whereas some routers already support popular dynamic DNS protocols by default so that you only have to provide your dynamic DNS server address.

Web host review: datahostingsolutions.com

plan	Pro	Pro Plus	Business
disk storage	75 MB	175 MB	300 MB
bandwidth	5 GB	12 GB	20 GB
domains	2	2	2
sub domains	2	2	2
ftp accounts	n/l	n/l	n/l
mysql accounts	1	1	1
email accounts	10	20	30
control panels	n/a	n/a	n/a
monthly price	$7.95	$9.95	$19.95

Web host review: hostgator.com

plan	Hatchling	Baby	Swamp	Dedicated
disk storage	3.5 GB	5 GB	10 GB	25 GB
bandwidth	50 GB	75 GB	100 GB	500 GB
domains	1	n/l	n/l	n/l
sub domains	20	n/l	n/l	n/l
ftp accounts	20	n/l	n/l	n/l
mysql accounts	n/l	n/l	n/l	n/l
email accounts	20	n/l	n/l	n/l
control panels	cPanel	cPanel	cPanel	cPanel
monthly price	$6.95	$9.95	$14.95	$74.95

Co-location

Hosting plan where the provider allows the client to store his own server on their premises, providing both network and power supply to the customer's machine.

The client preserves full power over the server, including OS installation and management as well as hardware configuration.

Web host review: exovian.com

This hosting provider offers you both web hosting and reseller hosting plans at competitive prices. Operating systems isn't their best feature as only RedHat Enterprise Linux and Windows 2003 Server are at your disposal. On the other hand the server hardware consists of Pentium 4 2.8 GHz + Hyper Threading and 2GB RAM.

Their web hosting plans include, Personal with 1000 MB storage space, 50 GB bandwidth, 1 domain name unlimited FTP accounts, unlimited MySQL accounts, unlimited sub domains, unlimited email accounts, unlimited mailing lists, daily site backup, dedicated IP ($2 per month) for $6.95 per month paid annually, Professional with 2000 MB storage space, 100 GB bandwidth, 2 domain names unlimited FTP accounts, unlimited MySQL accounts, unlimited sub domains, unlimited email accounts, unlimited mailing lists, daily site backup, dedicated IP ($2 per month) for $11.95 per month paid annually, Business with 3000 MB storage space, 150 GB bandwidth, 3 domain names unlimited FTP accounts, unlimited MySQL accounts, unlimited sub domains, unlimited email accounts, unlimited mailing lists, daily site backup, dedicated IP ($2 per month) for $15.95 per month paid annually and Corporate with 4000 MB storage space, 200 GB bandwidth, 5 domain names unlimited FTP accounts, unlimited MySQL accounts, unlimited sub domains, unlimited email accounts, unlimited mailing lists, daily site backup, dedicated IP ($2 per month) for $19.95 per month paid annually.

Their reseller hosting plans include, Entry with 5000 MB storage space, 100 GB bandwidth, unlimited domain names, cPanel/WHM + Fantastico, private name servers, 8 dedicated IP's, unlimited mailing lists, daily site backup, additional IP's ($2 per month) for $19.95 per month, Midlevel with 10000 MB storage space, 200 GB bandwidth, unlimited domain names, cPanel/WHM + Fantastico, private name servers, 12 dedicated IP's, unlimited mailing lists, daily site backup, additional IP's ($2 per month) for $29.95 per month, Next Step with 15000 MB storage space, 300 GB bandwidth, unlimited domain names, cPanel/WHM + Fantastico, private name servers, 16 dedicated IP's, unlimited mailing lists, daily site backup, additional IP's ($2 per month) for $39.95 per month, Top with 20000 MB storage space, 400 GB bandwidth, unlimited domain names, cPanel/WHM + Fantastico, private name servers, 24 dedicated IP's, unlimited mailing lists, daily site backup, additional IP's ($2 per month) for $49.95 per month.

Domain review: yahoo.com

Definitely the lowest domain prices to my knowledge, only $2.99 per year including all major top level domains (.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .us).

The offer features 24-hour toll-free customer support, domain forwarding, control panel, DNS management, email forwarding, bonus starter web page, easy upgrade and private domain registration.

Hosting company lookup

Ever wondered what company was providing a web hosting account, dedicated server, co-location or virtual server to one of your favourite sites? Maybe their hosting plans suit your web space needs at low costs or provide the perfect server for your web hosting reseller business thus shortcutting your search.

First find the IP address the site's domain name resolves to, which is easily accomplished using the Unix host command like "host hostmag.blogspot.com" then run the following Unix whois command "whois 66.102.15.101". Here are the results for this sample query:

OrgName: Google Inc.
OrgID: GOGL
Address: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
City: Mountain View
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 94043
Country: US

Et voila, Google hosts Host Mag!

Web stats

Have you already bought a web hosting account or dedicated server, placed your web site online but don't know how appealing it is? It's time for some statistics, they'll let you grasp the quality of your content by telling what type of traffic hits your server, hence enabling you with valuable knowledge to further improve.

There's plenty of free web stats online featuring lots of good stuff, so just google a little bit and find which one suits your liking. Important stats include hits per day, country of origin, internet service provider, referring page, etc.

Host Mag itself is now using StatCounter to monitor its traffic because it has a lot of interesting statistics and an elegant web interface even though several other sites provide a similar service.

Web host review: netfirms.com

Whether you're a skilled programmer or giving your first steps in web publishing this hosting company is for you. Their services include web hosting, domain hosting, email, ecommerce and site design.

Their basic personal hosting plan features 500 MB of disk space, 10 GB monthly data transfer, 10 email accounts, Netfirms Picture Pro photo gallery, FrontPage extensions, PHP scripting and 24/7 live response tech team support only for $4.95 per month.

Domain names are surely their best asset starting at an amazing $4.95 limited offer. You can either host the domain yourself or use their web based domain manager.

Their easy ecommerce solution, Netfirms Commerce Pro with fully web based control is also a good choice if you can't build your own ecommerce platform.

Finally, if you don't know anything about html just use their site builder, though it's not the perfect way to produce good looking web pages WYSIWYG style lets you focus on the content providing decent formatting.

Virtual Server

A virtual server is a small virtual server within a real server. A virtual server should act like a normal server featuring the same characteristics when accessed from a remote client.

Virtual hosting allows providers to sell cheap virtual servers sharing the same hardware plataform providing the clients with a fully operational system with less processing and storage capacity though.

Virtual servers are typically implemented at the kernel level of an operating system. Among others, User Mode Linux, BSD jails and Microsoft Virtual Server are widely used in the hosting business.

Dedicated server review: serverpronto.com

This is so far the cheapest dedicated server I've ever seen, like they say "The World's Most Affordable Dedicated Server".

The starter kit comprises an AMD 2000+ CPU, 256 MB DDR RAM, 40 GB hard drive, 200 GB traffic and 100 Mbps connection only for $29.95 per month plus $69 for the setup fee which unfortunately is a limited time offer ($149 is the usual setup fee). Further packages include Power, Power Plus, Pro Power, Pro Power Plus and Xtreme Power with increasing hardware and network performance to suit the needs of any hosting company.

On top of that, the available operating system flavors include Linux (Red Hat 9, Fedora Core 1, 2, 3, Debian 3.1, Suse, Gentoo, CentOS 3.4, 4.0), BSD (FreeBSD 4.9, 5.3, OpenBSD 3.6), Windows 2000 Server (Standard, Advanced) and Windows 2003 Server (Web Edition, Standard, Enterprise). Popular web based control panels like Webmin, Plesk, cPanel and Helm are also featured.

If you're short on money and need a dedicated server this is certainly a good choice, however if you don't need all the processing and storing capacity of a real host search the web for a good virtual hosting solution.

Linux vs. BSD

Many bytes have been written comparing these two on the hosting field, yet none of them seems to come out as the big winner. Some benchmarks may clearly highlight some Linux features while others prefer BSD, though usually the people behind this comparative articles tend to be somewhat biased towards one particular operating system thus showing a twisted reality about the facts.

BSD wise things are simpler, among FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, FreeBSD definitely gathers more sympathy from hosting providers for its superior performance and documentation. So the title of this post at Host Mag should really be "Linux vs. FreeBSD" particularly so with the latest versions of both Linux and FreeBSD kernel which surely put them apart.

The truth is both Linux and FreeBSD are up to the task of web hosting or any other kind of hosting and as long as you are not receiving massive loads of traffic the differences should not be noticeable. There are indeed subtle dissimilarities performance wise, buried deep down the two kernels due to distinct implementations but those show up only under extreme traffic conditions.

So if you're not a big Internet Service Provider or a hosting company don't waste too much time choosing between these two based on comparison charts but rather use them both and learn for yourself which one suits you best. Although Linux obviously still has an edge on the desktop due to its huge developer community providing the latest device drivers on the server domain FreeBSD speaks the same language. Both being POSIX compliant Unix clones the interface is pretty much the same, albeit some minor details like command options, device names, packaging systems or directory structure.

Host

A host is a networked computer system accessed by a remote user. In terms of software the host runs a server while the remote user runs a client. Both endpoints exchange information using a common protocol.

An Internet host is any entity implementing a TCP/IP stack connected to the Internet through a network which can be remotely accessed by its unique IP address comprising 32 bit in the form of four numbers separated by periods.