James Thornton

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Internet Business Consultant

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Web Hosting Internet Connection For high-performance and high-availability Web hosting, you must have a good network. Even if you have the fastest, most reliable server in the world, your website will often be inaccessible if your network is junk. If you can afford it, consider hosting at at tier 1 provider. Tier 1 providers are at the top of the Internet connectivity food chain. Tier 1 providers are part of the Internet backbone and have the largest Internet connections. Tier 2 providers connects to tier 1 providers, and tier 3 providers connect to a tier 2 providers, and so on. There are about 30 tier 1 providers, and examples include: AT&T, Level 3, Qwest, Savvis, and Verio. While tier 1 providers will have the most reliable connections, they are often the most expensive so go up the food chain as far as you can afford. Bandwidth refers to the size of the connection, and bandwidth saturation becomes a larger factor the farther down the food chain you go. For example, a T3 connection is larger than a T1 connection, but an ISP with 100 customers on a T3 may have less available bandwidth than an ISP with one customer on a T1. However, this does not always tell the tale. If the ISP providing the T1 is connected to a T3 serving 200 other ISPs, the T1 connection may be slower than the T3 serving 100 customers. Multi-homed means that the host has more than one Internet connection. You should consider how many Internet connections the provider has because more connections result in more reliable service since they have backup connections if one goes down. Datacenter Once you find some web hosting providers that you can afford with suitable Internet connections, you need to evaluate their datacenters. The term datacenter refers to the facility where they keep the computer systems. You should evaluate stuff like their power system, cooling system, and security. Here are some questions to ask: How many backup generators do they have to keep the power running in the event of a power loss? Do they provide you with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS)? Does the datacenter have a powerful cooling system that keeps temperatures down to at least 60 or 70 degrees Farenheit so that the computers are kept cool? How sophisticated is their fire prevention system? What are their security policies regarding datacenter access? How well do they monitor their facility? Are system administrators on staff 24x7? Do they have a 100% uptime service-level agreement (SLA)? Will they give you a list of customers you can contact as references? Also, your industry may have special datacenter requirements so you should find out what they are before you commit to a host. For example, for security reasons financial institutions are often required to host at SAS 70 certified facilities. Hosting Plans There are four main types of Web hosting plans: Shared: Hosting provider owns the server, and you share it with several other websites. Dedicated: Hosting provider owns the server, you administer it and have exclusive rights to it. Managed: Hosting provider owns the server and administers it for you. Collocation: You own the server and administer it. Services Below is a list of services some Web hosting companies provide: DNS Backup Hardware maintenance E-mail VPN Firewall Intrusion detection Internet access service monitoring Disaster recovery Clustering Load balancing Note: This "Web Hosting" chapter is not finished, and it will be part of the book "Internet Business Development".

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James Thornton,<jamesjamesthornton.com> Services: Internet Marketing Consultant

Electric Speed: Internet Marketers

Reader's Comments

This is a good post about T1 internet connection because broadband communications is the future of internet technology.

-- Lawrence Davis, February 9, 2008