HotTopicsOnline.com reports that, as of 2009, there were well over 230 million websites. That number is increasing as new sites pop up. Although these sites have different content and purposes, the one thing they all have in common is that they require web hosting. Without web hosting, websites wouldn't be able to connect to the Internet. How web hosting works really is a simple process of five steps and two major pieces of equipment.
The Server
Web hosting involves a primary computer known as a server. The first job of the server is to store information about the website. The second job of the server is to locate and retrieve that data.
The Browser
A web browser is an application that sends a request to the server for the website and related pages you want to see. The browser also translates the data provided by the server into something we can recognize. The browser application is stored on your computer's hard drive. Two popular browsers are Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer.
The Process
As explained by TopBits.com, when you type the domain name of a website (e.g., www.somesite.com) into the URL bar in your browser, your browser has to find that domain. To do this, it sends a message to a Domain Name System (DNS) server and requests the IP address for the domain name. You can think of this as being like calling the operator for a specific phone number. Once the DNS server replies to the browser with the website's IP address, the browser sends a request for website data to that address, which represents a specific computer serving as a web host server. The web host server takes this request and retrieves data for the website from where it is stored on the server drives. Then the server sends the data back to the browser, which translates it.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the amount of data you can send over a network in a given time period, according to TechTerms.com. The amount of bandwidth available is important in web hosting because the web server requires bandwidth to access the website data on the drive. The less bandwidth a server has, the slower the server will be to send data back to the browser. This can be a huge issue for websites that have complex coding or large files, or which are accessed by large numbers of users.
Options
Any computer connected to a network can serve as a web host server. However, there are two primary options for web hosting. The first is to use a free server. This is a good option for individuals because free servers don't have as much hard drive space or bandwidth. The second option is to purchase web hosting from a web hosting company. The servers provided by these companies are much larger and have more bandwidth, so they're better for businesses or any organization whose website gets a lot of traffic.