WEB SERVER

A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients such as web browsers and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents,which usually are web pages such as HTML documents can be termed as web server.

The basic services for web servers is provided by web hosting – other than that can be considered as add add on features in the theory, in practice it is essential to run a Internet business.

Web hosting provider should compulsorily provide the below mentioned function tp your web server:

1. Hard Disk Space

For all the practice purposes we need hard disk space. To host a website you need hard disk space available on a web server. The files which are part of websites can be a MSWord documents or a Excel spreadsheets. All these files use the space available in the hard disk. Actually web hosting providers provides you with space so that people around the globe can use the information provided in those files. .

In the recent past year the prices of the hard disks have drastically fallen and it is not known for a provider to make provision for packages.

The question is how much would you require?

If you require average website which generally makes use of static HTML pages which generally requires 5MB to 10MB of hard disk space. And , if you want a dynamic website where your files can be stored then it uses MySQL database this also require hard disk space. They generally require space between 100MB to 200MB which is more than enough.

And if you want to store emails on your server then again you need to add these to your account. These emails takes lot of space very rapidly if user send larger files. You have to regularily check the space used by emails as individual mailboxes can go up to 50 to 60 MBs and if you want to host video or audio files on to your server you will require much larger disk space. These files can take upto 30 to 40 MB.

2. Bandwidth

When any visitor visits your website it will consume bandwidth as it is required to open any pages in your sites. If you have video or audio files it will large bandwidth. One best formula is to have allocation of about 100Kb for every user. That will mean that every 500 visitor will take about 50MB of your bandwidth. It is fact that for an average site which contains text and some pictures uses nearly 50MB of your bandwidth. And if you have larger galleries of pictures, video/audio files then you should go for 150kb per visitors. You should always check your bandwidth through your control panel or website statics as search engine also consume bandwidth and also make a note that you have to contact your provider in case if want to buy extra bandwidth to prevent fine.