What is Dedicated Hosting?
BY Hal Wirtsen
Dedicated hosting is a newer form of web hosting, so
before you can figure out if your web hosting company is
ready to offer dedicated hosting, you need to understand
basically what dedicated hosting is and how it benefits
your clients.
Dedicated hosting designates a specific web server for the
use of a single client. This allows your web hosting
company to host that client's single web site or multiple
web sites from one dedicated server. The advantage of
hosting a site on a dedicated server is the ability to
provide that client with more options for software
configurations, the capability to handle much larger web
site traffic, and a more flexible bandwidth than that
available with shared hosting solutions.
Dedicated hosting provides your clients with professional
data, hardware security, and superior connectivity. The
connectivity is maximized for sites that have a lot of
traffic or are extensive because those sites and their
visitors are the only users of a particular server, which
greatly improves efficiency and reliability.
Bandwidth means the amount of data you can send through a
connection; the greater the bandwidth, the faster the
connection. Since dedicated hosting uses one server to host
a single web site, only that site will be accessing the
file systems of the server. This allows that site to take
the greatest advantage of the high-speed network provided
by the web host. This means that the web page download will
be significantly faster than sites that use a shared
server.
All these factors are important for web sites that draw a
large amount of traffic. For e-commerce sites, this
translates to faster service for their customer and greater
potential for income.
If you decide to offer dedicated hosting, it is a good idea
to have access to multiple Internet service providers. This
will ensure redundancy, so that if one connection goes
down, another one will be available. Multiple Internet
service providers are particularly important for clients
who have web sites that draw a lot of traffic. In the event
that there is a problem with one server connection, you can
then reroute their traffic through another provider,
keeping their web site fully operational.
The best solution for sites that are very important to your
business is to have co-location, which means that there are
multiple buildings housing multiple servers where the
buildings are geographically dispersed. This guarantees
that if there is a service problem in one location, the web
site can be accessed through an alternate location.
Furthermore, it is advisable to have your point of presence
directly connected to the Internet backbone provider. A
backbone provider is a high-speed connection that forms a
major pathway within a network.
These factors will ensure your responsiveness to customer
problems when they first occur. Many web hosting companies
have lost customers and have received negative media
reviews because they were not able to be responsive to
their customers when problems first occurred.
If you are directly connected to the Internet backbone
provider, you can offer a high level of quality customer
service and satisfaction, and even provide round-the-clock
online technical support. In the instance that a customer's
site requires a new server, it can be quickly configured
online so that they are up and running within a single day.
For many companies, a dedicated server is the most
efficient web hosting solution. Dedicated servers offer the
advantage of excellent technical support with dedicated
connectivity, which gives sole use and precise control over
the web site's server.
By offering dedicated web hosting, you give new companies
an opportunity to keep their start-up costs relatively low
and e-commerce sites with high traffic the reliability and
speed their business requires.
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More Great Articles by Hal Wirtsen
About the Author: Hal Wirtsen is the webmaster of
Hosting-US.com, which is a free informational website about
web hosting. For more information, please visit:
http://www.Hosting-US.com
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