Our Hosting Infrastructure Details of HomePage's servers, bandwidth and hosting environment. Hosting Requirements Typical requirements for sites hosted by HomePage. Additional Hosting-Related Services Traffic logs and email services. How We Cost Hosting HomePage's approach to fair hosting prices.

Hosting requirements are based on two aspects:

• Physical Hardware
• Bandwidth

No matter how big the hosting company, the costs of hardware and bandwidth are generally the same, so with web hosting it really is the case that you get exactly what you pay for. So when you're buying hosting, if a deal sounds too good to be true, then it probably is too good to be true.

Hardware Requirements

In assessing the hardware requirements for your site, HomePage will assume that database-based sites need to be hosted on two separate servers: one for the SQL database, and the second being the web server itself.

Each server needs to be of the following minimum specification:

• Dual Pentuim III processor
• 512MB RAM (web server), 1GB RAM (database server)
• Mirrored/RAID disk sub-system (around 10GB of effective storage is required)
• Duplex 100Mbit Ethernet adapters

The software required is Windows NT4 or higher on both servers, and Microsoft SQL Server 7 or higher on the database server.

All HomePage servers are backed up nightly and we have a number of hot-standby servers (and components) in the event of a systems failure.

Depending on your site's requirements (such as traffic levels and the amount of data processed), we'll either host your site and database on shared servers or on equipment dedicated to your project.

Bandwidth

In working out our hosting costs, HomePage calculates the amount of bandwidth that your site will need, based on the number of visits you require it to cope with. For example, a site expecting 500,000 hits per month equates to a bandwidth requirement of an average of 158Kbit/s. This is based on:

• Average 50K page size
• 30 days per month
• Traffic spread evenly over 12 hours

To account for traffic bulges, we always double the bandwidth required, giving 316Kbit/s in our example, and so we'd end up with a figure of 384Kbit/s (i.e. the next logical bandwidth break-point above 316Kbit/s).

If your bandwidth requirements become sizeable then we have an arrangement to co-locate servers at Level(3) Communications, a tier-1 ISP. Level(3) benefits from telco redundancy (generators, dual-air-conditioning, etc.) and over a gigabit of potential connectivity. Hosting at Level(3) is charged on a per megabit basis, with a minimum of 4Mbit/s required.

If you are interested in either pure hosting for an existing site, or in a project that combines hosting with site development, then drop us a line for a free assessment of how we may be able to help you, or visit the Quixa web site.