ISP's and Requesting a webpage.
ISP
The ISP (Internet Service Provider) is what you need in order to connect to the internet.
Different ISP’s offer different deals and speeds. Orange, sky, Tesco and BT are all ISP’s and all have different speeds and deals depending on your location. Some ISP’s provide you with web hosting, domain names, routers and your own email e.g. Riley@tesco.co.uk
Web hosting is where you host your website on a server. You can host a website on a server that you own but this requires knowledge and time. Most websites have their sites hosted by companies offering web hosting services.
Web Hosting Services
Web hosting is where you buy space on someone’s server that allows you to host a website.
The website is hosted on a server which you access when you go to that web address. There are 2 types of web hosting servers – shared or dedicated. Shared means your website is being hosted on the same server as other peoples so you will have more limitations than dedicated servers such as bandwidth, traffic, web space etc. With a dedicated server you have a server for yourself and don’t share it with anyone so the security is much better and you don’t have to share bandwidth, traffic or web space with anyone else.
Web hosting service is aimed at people who don’t have time or knowledge to host their website on their own server.
Depending on what site/server you choose to host with you will get different deals such as bandwidth, server space, traffic and domain names.
Some of the other features offered by web hosting sites are
Sub domains these can be limited or unlimited
Money back – some web hosting sites offer an anytime money back guarantee and others give a limited time.
Email – some companies offer an option to have your own email address such as Riley@WEBSITENAMEHERE.co.uk
Site builder – this is where you use the sites tools to create your webpage if you don’t know any code to do it yourself. This makes the design of the website much easier but it means you have to use a premade theme design.
SSL certificate – Secure socket layer. This provides encryption between the web server and the internet (browser) to make sure that all data is secure.
An example of a site that allows you to buy web space on their servers would be http://www.ipage.com. Sites like this provide package deals such as web hosting and domain names included.
Domain Name Registration
In order to make the website go live it needs an address so that people can view it. The domain name is the name of the site so it should be relevant to your company name
e.g. www.fancythat.co.uk so that people can easily find your site when they search for it.
A domain name can be bought from domain name registrars online such as www.godaddy.com.
When people type in a web address into the address bar in their browser, a message is sent to their ISP and then onwards to the DNS (Domain Name Servers) which translates the domain name entered into the actual address (to view a website you need to get the page from a webserver which is an IP address, the DNS looks at the address enters and finds the IP) and then sends that information back to your computer.
An example in detail.
The client enters in a web address such as “http://uk.yahoo.com” this is sent to their router either through wired or wireless connection . It is then sent to the clients ISP which allows them to connect to the internet e.g. Talk Talk, BT and Orange etc.
Before you can access the webhost server you need to look up the actual address of the site you want to visit. The actual name of the server you want to go to is an IP address but it is much easier to remember names than a long list of numbers. The DNS server takes the name of the site you want to go to and looks up the IP address and then sends that information back to the client through the clients ISP.
Once the client has the actual address of the website they can request information from it and the information of the page are sent back to the client’s computer.
Once they have been to the DNS to retrieve the real address of the web host server they then can access the web host server to retrieve the webpage which then displays inside your browser. This all happens in a matter of seconds/milliseconds depending on your connection speed (broadband or dial up ect).
The main software tool the client uses to access a web page is a browser. A browser allows you to browse the internet. There are many different types of browser e.g. Google chrome, Internet explorer, Safari, Opera. This is where the webpage is displayed from the web host. All browsers use the same protocol - HTTP ( will go into protocols in later tutorials) this is a request and response communication method.
To sum up.
- ISP's (Internet service providers) - allow us to connect to the internet.
- Shared severs - where your site is hosted with others.
- Dedicated servers - Where you have a server for yourself.
- A website name is not its "actual" address. A real address is a IP address of the web server its hosted on e.g. www.google.com - 74.125.79.104. We use names instead of numbers as names are much easier to remember.
- DNS = Domain name servers
- Method of viewing a webpage is.... Enter web page address e.g www.google.co.uk- message is sent from your computer to your router, through your ISP and to your DNS where the name of the website you entered is checked in a database to find its "actual" address. The "actual" address is then sent back to your computer where it request the webpage from the webserver with the address it just received from your DNS. The webpage is requested and then shown into your browser.
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