Shared Web Hosting

More about shared web hosting

The shared web hosting service is shared by many users and must include system administration. This is beneficial to users that do not want to deal with it, but an impediment to power users that want more control.

Shared webhosting normally uses a web-based control panel system, such as cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk, Sphera, Ensim, Helm, H-sphere, or one of many other control panel products. Control panels and web interfaces have been involved in a controversial debate as Web.com claims that it holds patent rights to the hosting technology with its' 19 patents.

A large wholesale host named Hostopia, recently purchased a license to use that technology from web.com for 10% of retail revenues [1]. Web.com recently sued Godaddy as well for similar patent infringement [2].

The provider, in shared linux web hosting, is in charge of installation of server software, management of servers, security updates and other features of the service. Servers are often based on the Linux operating systems because more Control Panel products are made for Linux. Though, some providers offer Microsoft Windows or FreeBSD based solutions. The Plesk control panel, for instance, has two versions - for Linux and Windows, both with very alike interfaces and functionality, with the exception of OS-specific differences (for example, supporting ASP.NET, or Microsoft SQL Server on Windows).

There are multitudes of shared website hosting providers in the United States alone. They range from home shops, to small design firms, to multi-million dollar providers with hundreds of thousands of customers.

A great part of the shared website hosting market is driven through Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) or Affiliate programs. Shared linux web hosting can also be done privately by sharing the cost of running a server, this is called cooperative hosting.

Implementation - Shared web hosting can be accomplished in two ways: IP-based and name-based.

IP-based - In IP-based shared web hosting, also called dedicated IP hosting, each virtual web host has a different IP address. The web server is configured with multiple physical network interfaces, or virtual network interfaces on the same physical interface. The web server software uses the IP address the client connects to in order to determine which web site to show the user. Name-based - In name-based virtual hosting, also called shared IP hosting, the virtual hosts serve multiple hostnames on a single machine with a single IP address.

When a web browser requests a resource from a web server using HTTP/1.1 it includes the requested hostname as part of the request. The server uses this information to determine which web site to show the user.

Disadvantages

Name-based shared web hosting have some disadvantages:

• They do not properly support secure websites (HTTPS). All name-based virtual hosts using the same IP address must share the same digital certificate. This is because the SSL/TLS handshake takes place before the hostname is sent to the server. Thus the server doesn't know which encryption key to use when the connection is made. An extension to the TLS protocol, part of RFC 3546 - Transport Layer Security (TLS) Extensions, specifies a way for the client to provide the requested host name as part of the handshake, but it is not yet widely implemented.
• If the Domain Name System is malfunctioning, it is harder to use a name-based virtually-hosted website. Typically, in this case, the user could fall back to using the IP address to contact the system, as in http://127.0.0.1/ (invalid IP for example only). However, the web browser doesn't know what hostname to send to the server, but a name-based virtual host requires it.
• They will not function with browsers that do not send the hostname as part of requests. This is true for older HTTP/1.0 browsers that have not retrofitted the host field feature from the HTTP/1.1 protocol.