Specifications

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22 Web Hosting -- Your Presence on the Web
Every business needs at least a minimal web presence. The easiest way to set up a site is to use a hosting
service to maintain a 24/7web presence regardless of how the office is connected to the Internet. The
hosting service maintains the server and provides high-speed Internet access. This reduces traffic on
relatively expensive and slow first mile connection to your business. Many ISPs allow customers to set up
public web servers for free. You are assigned a name that looks something like
http://www.ISP.net/~yourbiz. This uses the domain name of the ISP as the starting point for your web site.
Using a hosting service means web site traffic need not be granted access to your network. Internet traffic
that originates within the LAN is allowed out but access attempts from the outside in are rejected. This
dramatically eases the security task of managing a small network.
23 YourDomain.com – Your Name on the Internet
Instead of having potential customers’ access you site indirectly through the name of the hosting service or
ISP a better approach is to create and register your own domain name. A domain name helps identify your
business and prevents changes in ISP or hosting service from affecting customers. Once you register a
domain name it can be transferred to a different service provider without impacting your public persona.
With a registered domain name customers access your business site by entering http://www.yourbiz.com.
There are many ways to implement a business web server. It can be a virtual server provided by the hosting
service, a physical server collocated at the hosting service, or a server physically located at your place of
business. A virtual server allows a single physical machine to run multiple web sites resulting in very low
cost. This is cost effective for low traffic sites. Choice of the optimum server implementation depends
traffic volume and the type of site you intent to set up. Obviously an e-commerce site driven by a catalog
database with credit card authorization is much more demanding then a simple static web presence.
A registered domain allows email to be moved completely in house rather then use the services of the
hosting service. To do this one must set up a POP and SMTP server and have the hosting service create
DNS records that point to the IP address of the servers. This requires your network be assigned static IP
address.
The hosting service fee is based on the size of the web site and the amount of traffic it generates. We use
the same company for both web hosting and dial up access http://www.inr.net.
23.1 Registering Your Domain Name
The first choice is to decide which Top Level Domain (TLD) is most appropriate for your business. You
can register the same name in multiple TLDs this is typically done when the company name is
trademarked. The COM TLD is for commercial use, so is the new BIZ TLD. Networking companies
commonly use the NET TLD. Some TLDs are geographically specific. If you want to identify your
company with a specific region they are a good choice.
Hosting services typically provide automated tools to register and setup a domain. They coordinate with
InterNIC or other registration agencies. To register a name the registrar database is examined to insure the
request does not conflict with an existing name in the TLD. The new name is assigned provisionally in case
another registrar has recently recorded the same name. The hosting service updates their DNS name server
database to translate the domain name to the IP address of your web server. Once registered it takes 24-48
hours for your domain name to propagate throughout the DNS system on the Internet.