Resellers are much like regular hosts, except they buy a block of shared hosting from a service provider and then sell that block to their customers.

Many resellers start off by using a control panel to host domains and customers. Web Host Manager (WHM), a subset of CPanel, enables anybody with point and click precision to become a reseller. (See »Webhosting FAQ »What is a Control Panel?)

If a reseller offers good service at a good value, you will gain customers and experience. A reseller has a good opportunity to gain experience hosting a limited number of customers. Once you get to a certain level, you will want to move up to a dedicated server.

Who are they?

Resellers are usually commonplace people- your 18 year old on the block wanting to venture into the complex and greedy world of hosting, to your 72 year old great-grandfather looking for an extra source of easy income. Their experience with hosting varies widely, from zero to usually mediocre.

Advantages

The big advantage to a reseller is that they're usually magnitudes cheaper than the actual hosting company. The reseller deals with the physical host (which is more expensive), and you deal with the reseller. You may also get individual attention tailored to your needs, depending on the host.

Disadvantages

Since the reseller is often the third in line from the actual machine, liability for uptime and server maintenance is often not directly in their hands. Experience in fixing problems may not be their forte.

A word of warning

Resellers which have extremely cheap plans are also infamous for being Fly By Night hosts which mock up hosting plans, take money, offer service for a short term... and then proceed to withdraw a large amount of money and "fly away at night" unexpectedly. In case you have to move to another provider, keep a backup of your site.

If you're curious about a host, post about it in our forums, and the regulars should be able to tell you more about the host in question.

A virtual host is a computer that provides web or email services for several different hosts. Virtual hosting is often used by sites that do not require the bandwidth and storage of a dedicated host server.

A web services company offering virtual hosting will perform all of the hardware and software maintenance on the server. One limitation of shared hosting is that one misbehaving customer can impact all the customers on the same server. The web services company should monitor the performance of the shared host system to make sure that it doesn't become overloaded with too many customers.

A web services company offering virtual hosting will also offer email hosting. You will typically manage your site, installed packages, and email using "control panel" software. »Webhosting FAQ »What is a Control Panel?

The web service company may also web site production tools and additional services. A web services company offering shared hosting also usually provides domain name registration. Many people register their names with the web services company, which can cause problems when you want to move your web site to another host. Web hosting companies with sleazy business practices will make it difficult or nearly impossible to transfer the domain name you have registered with them. For that reason, we suggest that you keep your domain registrar separate from your web hosting company.

For more information, please see the Wikipedia entry on Shared hosting.

Virtual Private Servers or Virtual Dedicated Servers are provided by software that splits a single physical server into multiple virtual servers.

VPS systems are often used for someone who doesn't need a whole server, but wants root or administrative control over a server. Another advantage is that you have complete control of an isolated environment. A runaway script or crash on one VPS doesn't impact the other VPS instances.

VPS is best for people who have outgrown shared hosting, but don't need a dedicated server. Accordingly, your own VPS is priced between shared hosting and a dedicated server.

For more information, please see Wikipedia's entry on Vitrual private servers.

A dedicated server is typically a single server that is rented from a internet hosting company. It's the next step up from a Virtual Private Server.

The user rents the server, software and an Internet connection from the web hosting company. The server's hardware maintenance is handled by the web hosting company. Typically the web hosting company may install operating system patches and will provide a limited amount of "hands-on" operations (such as pressing the reboot button).

Larger sites or sites with several servers tend to move up to Colocation.

For more information, please see the Wikipedia entry on Dedicated hosting service.

Colo or Colocation is used when multiple computer systems are used to deliver content to the Internet.

The colocation company provides a dedicated facility with multiple Internet connections (for reliability and performance), air conditioning, and uninterruptable power.

Colocation is typically sold by cabinet space or by the amount of space in a secured cage within a physically secure room. The cabinet space may be purchased as 1/8, 1/4, 1/4, or a full cabinet. Rack-mounted computer equipment is installed in the racks by the customer. The customer is responsible for all hardware and software maintenance.

Internet bandwidth is provided by a dedicated Ethernet connection. Bandwidth is usually an additional charge on top of the cabinet space.

For more information, please see this Wikipedia article on Colocation.

The term "95th percentile billing" is often heard when an Internet connection is provided as "burstable" (variable rate) bandwidth. This is the case with the Internet connection used with colo and dedicated server web hosting plans. For these solutions, the Internet connection is provided as a Ethernet port on the data center's LAN, and billed according to your usage.

said by »www.seanadams.com/95/:

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The 95th percentile is the smallest number that is greater that 95% of the numbers in a given set. The reason this statistic is so useful in measuring data throughput is that is gives a very accurate picture of the cost of the bandwidth.

Here's an example. Suppose an ISP sells you a T1 line, but you're only using it to access the web. Even though you might frequently download very large files (filling the pipe) your cost to the ISP is negligible, because your usage is intermittent. A single T3 connection to the backbone could easily support hundreds of such downstream customers, and never become saturated. As another example, suppose you are hosting a very busy web site that half-way fills your T1 for several hours every day. This type of bandwidth is more expensive, because your ISP can't oversell their connection to the backbone as effectively.

The important thing to realize is that it doesn't cost your ISP anything to sell you a pipe of any particular size - it is the sustained rate of data transfer that costs them money. The sum of the 95th percentile usage of all of an ISP's customers predicts the peak amount of backbone traffic that the ISP will incur (in a given direction).

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How is the "95th percentile billing" calculated?

Counters on network devices are read every few minutes. The total number of bytes transferred (in and out) is determined each time the counters are read. The higher of these two numbers (inbound or outbound traffic), divided by the time period (in seconds), results in a single bps (bits per second) transfer measurement.

Each measurement is stored in a database. At the end of each billing cycle, the measurements are sorted in decreasing order. The top 5% of these measurements are thrown out. The next highest bps measurement is the "the 95th percentile", and that's the rate for that billing cycle.

More graphics and software for finding the 95th percentile can be found on »www.seanadams.com/95/

The control panel is used to manage the services on your web host.

Using the control panel you can see you used disk space, used bandwidth, configure email addresses, and other tasks.

You will access your control panel with a web browser, and it will be securied with a username and password.

The web service provider may use any of a number of popular control panels. Some popular brands include CPanel, Ensim, Plesk, and DirectAdmin.