Is Unlimited Bandwidth Necessary?

If you are looking for a web site host, you may be lost in the sea of conflicting information and options out there. It can be hard to know what to do and with whom to go when you are not even sure what you need for your new website. Before you purchase hosting from anyone, make sure you understand exactly what you need and what each item means before pulling the buy trigger. Many webmasters like to go with hosting companies that offer unlimited disc space, unlimited bandwidth and unlimited emails but that can be tricky. Why? Well, you see, each site has their own idea of what unlimited may actually mean. Lets pass over to Andrew from Pisys.Net – a certified IT consultant from Aberdeen, Scotland. He’ll explain more.

When you see someone offering unlimited bandwidth, this should mean that you can have as much traffic as you can get and you will never have to pay more for it. (Bandwidth is what is used when someone comes to your site). The host stores your site on their computers, which takes up disc space and, when the site is running, memory. When someone clicks on your site, they essentially download bits of that site from that computer (known as a server). This information flow is referred to as bandwidth. So, it follows that if you have a lot of traffic, you are using a lot of bandwidth.

You are naturally going to want to find a host offering unlimited bandwidth for your web sites because, as you might imagine, this means you will never be hit with a bill for bandwidth exceeding what you have already paid for. The problem is that although some sites claim that they offer are hosting unlimited bandwidth web sites, that is not always the case. They have a limit. They say unlimited because most people will never go over that limit, but if your site is successful, you just might. That is why you have to find out what uses the most bandwidth, and then find out which hosts are truly unlimited.

If you have a site that is mostly text and a few pictures, you may never have to worry about using a ton of bandwidth. However, those that have a lot of large pictures and videos can have problems with bandwidth. If you have interactive games or forums, those … Read More

How Does Cloud Computing Work?

Everyone talks about cloud computing, but not about how does cloud computing work. This is because the end user does not need to know how does cloud computing work in order to use it. You do not need to understand how does cloud computing work behind Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and Google Docs to use them in your business. For the curious, how does cloud computing work is as simple as you want to make it, and it all extends from what the word cloud refers to.

So, how does cloud computing work? It mostly involves banks of computers working together as a single machine. It is this grid of computers that the term cloud actually refers to. This is not a new concept either. The cloud has been with us since the beginning of computers in various forms. What is different is that this collective virtual computer acts like a single machine.

How does cloud computing work with these clusters of computers? Since we are dealing with a virtual machine, the cloud computer utilizes the resources of the cluster of physical computers underneath it. The virtual computer then uses these resources to run your applications. These applications run independently of the server cluster underneath which is why you can scale the virtual computer with ease. The virtual computer and its applications are basically floating in a cloud of resources free of the physical world.

So, how does cloud computing work these server clusters to create the end user experience? To answer that, we must split the cloud into two layers. The first layer is the front-end, or public/end user layer. The front-end is what you interact with. This is the virtual machine. It thinks it is a normal computer so it acts like one. All cloud applications run on the front-end.

The back-end is where the magic happens. It is the how does cloud computing work. The back-end of cloud computing consists of the physical hardware clusters and the software that runs them. This also includes the networking technologies that connect them. These computers are designed to work together. They share resources. They share processes. They act collectively as a single machine: the virtual cloud computer. They are designed to be hot-swappable which means you can connect or disconnect them without turning them or the cluster off. If you need more resources, you just need to plug in a new … Read More