Virtual Servers vs. Virtual Hosting
Many of the low-cost hosting services use what is called Virtual Hosting (or sometimes Sub-hosting). Virtual Hosting is made possible by the introduction of HTTP/1.1 of the NCSA server, allowing multiple domains to be hosted under the same IP Address or virtual server. For example www.domain1.com and www.domain2.com would both point to the IP address 187.230.120.85. Many of the $10 to $50 per month hosting options fall under this category.
Unfortunately, there are serious limitations to this type of hosting:
The visitor's web browser must be HTTP/1.1 compliant (Netscape Navigator 2.0 or higher and MSIE 3.0 or higher) in order to see your site. If the browser is not compliant, they will not see your site but instead point to the "root" domain, which is often the ISP's site.
Along the same lines, search engine spiders which are not HTTP/1.1 compliant will be unable to index your site.
The bandwidth is shared among all domains hosted on that virtual server, therefore you often see traffic limitations or surcharges placed on these type of accounts.
Often you have no or limited CGI-BIN access with a Virtual Hosting account, and no access to the server configuration files (which allow you to add MIME types and other neat tricks)
Support for SSL Digital Certificates will be either difficult or non-existent.
Probably no telnet access to the site (very handy for script debugging and chmod commands)
Limitations in e-mail capability as all domains point to the same IP Address. For instance if you send an e-mail to [email protected] and [email protected], they will be seen as the same address interpreted as [email protected].
I should note here that most, but not all, web browsers are now HTTP/1.1 compliant - but there are still plenty of people with older machines running previous versions that it could be an issue.
For people wanting to have their domain hosted and are very budget-conscious, Virtual Hosting may be their best option. However, for those who are looking for a more powerful hosting environment the Virtual Server is the way to go:
Of course, these features come with a price: around $100-$200 per month, higher if you need more space or have intensive server processing requirements. The somewhat higher price is more than offset by the tremendous versatility and capability of the Virtual Server hosting environment. Internet Advertising Solutions offers Virtual Server hosting at competitive prices - please check out the Virtual Servers section for pricing and information.
Virtual Host Test
Notice:
It is important to have your web site on a Virtual Server instead of a virtual host. This utility will test your domain to determine which hosting method is employed.
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