Image hosting services

An image hosting service allows individuals to upload images to an Internet website. The image host will then store the image onto its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view that image.

How it works

Typically image hosting websites provide an upload interface; a form in which you specify the location of an image file on your local computer file system (using a browse button). After pressing a “Submit” button the file is uploaded to the image host’s server. Some image hosts allow you to specify multiple files at once, in this form, or the ability to upload one ZIP file containing multiple images. Additionally, some hosts allow FTP access, where single or multiple files can be uploaded in one session using FTP software or an FTP-capable browser.

After this process, your image is hosted on their server. Typically this means it is available on the web (to the public). You may also be allowed to make inline links to the hosted image, to embed it on other websites e.g.

• Linking with HTML code
• Linking with BBcode
• A clickable thumbnail that is linked to the full image

Usually, the image host will put restrictions on the maximum image size allowed, or the maximum space or bandwidth allowed per user. Due to bandwidth costs, free services usually offer relatively modest size limits per image when compared to paid services, but allow users hotlinking their images. Individuals needing to host large images should consider purchasing image hosting services or purchasing webhosting services, so that they may operate their own website.

Tools

Image hosts also allow tools such as the ability to create photoblogs/galleries with your images, or add them to a slideshow for easier viewing. Some offer more advanced tools such as the ability for an individual to add notes to an image they uploaded, sideloaders, or browser sidebars. Other hosts have introduced novel features such as the ability to automatically resize images down to a user-selected size. A Flickr tool allows you to upload photos using a camera phone with email capability.

Cost

Many image hosts are free. Of the free image hosts, the vast majority are supported by advertisement, mostly on their top pages, thumbnail pages, or 'not found' pages. Showing advertisements to users has enabled image size and bandwidth limits to increase.

Some free hosts have optional paid image hosting functions, while other hosts offer only paid services. Features and storage available are generally better for paid services, while cost is still much less than the cost of purchasing webhosting to operate a website. Paid services often allow users to have password protected photo albums, customizable skins, and customized subdomains. There are many other paid services available that offer different packages of features, options, and costs.

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File hosting service Info

Software file hosting

Authors of Shareware, Freeware and Open Source/Free software often use file hosting services to serve their software. The inherent problem with free downloads is the huge bandwidth cost. These hosts also offer additional services to the authors such as statistics or other marketing features.

Personal file storage

Personal file storage services are aimed at private individuals, offering a sort of "network storage" for personal backup, file access, or file distribution. Users can upload their files and share them publicly or keep them password-protected.

Prior to the advent of personal file storage services, off-site backup services were not typically affordable for individual and small office computer users.

Sometimes people prefer hosting their files on a publicly accessible HTTP server. In this case, they generally choose paid hosting, and use their hosting for this purpose. Many free hosting providers do not allow the storage of files for non-website-related use.

Storage

Most online file storage services offer space on a per-gigabyte basis, and sometimes include a bandwidth cost component as well. Usually these will be charged monthly or yearly. Some companies do offer the service for free, relying on advertising revenue. Some hosting services do not place any limit on how much space your account can consume. Some services require a software download which makes files only available on computers which have that software installed, others allow users to retrieve files through any web browser. With the increased inbox space offered by webmail services, many users have started using their webmail service as an online drive. Some sites offer free unlimited file storage but have a limit on the file size.

Increasingly, organizations are recognizing the benefits of co-locating their mission-critical equipment within a data centre. Colocation is becoming increasingly popular because of the time and cost savings a company can realize as a result of using shared data centre infrastructure. Significant benefits of scale (large power and mechanical systems) result in large colocation facilities, typically 5,000-10,000 m² (50,000 to 100,000 square feet). With IT and communications facilities in safe, secure hands, telecommunications, Internet, ASP and content providers, as well as enterprises, enjoy less latency and the freedom to focus on their core business.

Additionally, customers reduce their traffic back-haul costs and free up their internal networks for other uses. Moreover, by outsourcing network traffic to a colocation service provider with greater bandwidth capacity, web site access speeds should improve considerably.

Major types of colocation customers are:

• Web commerce companies, who use the facilities for a safe environment and cost-effective, redundant connections to the Internet
• Major enterprises, who use the facility for disaster avoidance, offsite data backup and business continuity
• Telecommunication companies, who use the facilities to interexchange traffic with other telecommunications companies and access to potential clients

Most network access point facilities provide colocation.

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Types of Web Hosting

Internet hosting services can run Web servers; see Internet hosting services.

Hosting services limited to the Web:

Many large companies who are not internet service providers also need a computer permanently connected to the web so they can send email, files, etc. to other sites. They may also use the computer as a website host so they can provide details of their goods and services to anyone interested. Additionally these people may decide to place online orders.

• Free web hosting service: Free web hosting is offered by different companies with limited services, sometimes advertisement-supported web hosting, and is often limited when compared to paid hosting.
• Shared web hosting service: one's website is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU. The features available with this type of service can be quite extensive. A shared website may be hosted with a reseller.
• Reseller web hosting: allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers could function, for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who they are affiliated with as a provider. Resellers' accounts may vary tremendously in size: they may have their own virtual dedicated server to a collocated server. Many resellers provide a nearly identical service to their provider's shared hosting plan and provide the technical support themselves.
• Virtual Dedicated Server: also known as a Virtual Private Server (VPS for short) divides server resources into virtual servers, where resources can be allocated in a way that does not directly reflect the underlying hardware. VPS will often be allocated resources based on a one server to many VPSs relationship, however virtualisation may be done for a number of reasons, including the ability to move a VPS container between servers. The users may have root access to their own virtual space. This is also known as a virtual private server or VPS. Customers are sometimes responsible for patching and maintaining the server.
• Dedicated hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, the user typically does not own the server. Another type of Dedicated hosting is Self-Managed or Unmanaged. This is usually the least expensive for Dedicated plans. The user has full administrative access to the box, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated box.
• Managed hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server but is not allowed full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, they are allowed to manage their data via FTP or other remote management tools. The user is disallowed full control so that the provider can guarantee quality of service by not allowing the user to modify the server or potentially create configuration problems. The user typically does not own the server. The server is leased to the client.
• Colocation web hosting service: similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the colo server; the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of the web hosting service. In most cases, the colocation provider may provide little to no support directly for their client's machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. In most cases for colo, the client would have his own administrator visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes.
• Cloud hosting: is a new type of hosting platform that allows customers powerful, scalable and reliable hosting based on clustered load-balanced servers and utility billing. Removing single-point of failures and allowing customers to pay for only what they use versus what they could use.
• Clustered hosting: having multiple servers hosting the same content for better resource utilization. Clustered Servers are a perfect solution for high-availability dedicated hosting, or creating a scalable web hosting solution. A cluster may separate web serving from database hosting capability.
• Grid hosting: this form of distributed hosting is when a server cluster acts like a grid and is composed of multiple nodes.
• Home server: usually a single machine placed in a private residence can be used to host one or more web sites from a usually consumer-grade broadband connection. These can be purpose-built machines or more commonly old PCs. Some ISPs actively attempt to block home servers by disallowing incoming requests to TCP port 80 of the user's connection and by refusing to provide static IP addresses. A common way to attain a reliable DNS hostname is by creating an account with a dynamic DNS service. A dynamic DNS service will automatically change the IP address that a URL points to when the IP address changes.

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Hosting reliability and uptime (Web Hosting)

Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. Many providers state that they aim for at least 99.9% uptime (roughly equivalent to 45 minutes of downtime a month, or less), but there may be server restarts and planned (or unplanned) maintenance in any hosting environment, which may or may not be considered part of the official uptime promise.

Many providers tie uptime and accessibility into their own service level agreement (SLA). SLAs sometimes include refunds or reduced costs if performance goals are not met.

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