Hosting Frequently Asked Questions What is Virtual Web Hosting? What if I want to run my own Web server? What factors should I consider when choosing whether to run my own Web server or to have my Web site hosted by WolfeNet? What happens if I exceed my prepaid bandwidth by a large amount? What is the difference in shared and Dedicated and Colocation: What is the difference between Windows 2000 and UNIX? What factors should I consider when choosing between hosting my Web site on Windows 2000 or UNIX? How do I choose the right Web hosting plan?
	Q: What is Virtual Web Hosting? When WolfeNet hosts your Web site, it resides on our servers, but allows you to view and work on it from your own PC. It's virtually like having a WolfeNet computer of your own, hence the term Virtual Web Hosting. Web hosting is an area in which WolfeNet has extensive experience. Your Web site will reside on one of our very fast, state-of-the-art servers, that are optimized for performance and reliability. WolfeNet's high-capacity, high-speed servers are connected through multiple different high-speed connections to different points on the Internet backbone. This kind of connection coupled with intelligent routing ensures rapid transfer which means that people looking at your Web site won't be kept waiting. We're also very concerned with reliability -- a concern that is reflected in our 24-hour monitoring and maintenance of servers, frequent system back-ups, and our multiple connections to different Internet backbone providers. We work hard at dramatically reducing the chance of upstream problems having an effect on your site. Q. What if I want to run my own Web server? A: If you want to run your own Web server, you'll want a reliable connection for it and that's something WolfeNet can provide. DSL is one option to consider, as is a dedicated line. You may also consider co-locating your server here at WolfeNet where it would be directly connected to the Internet. Q. What factors should I consider when choosing whether to run my own Web server or to have my Web site hosted by WolfeNet? A. Establishing and connecting your own Web server by yourself can require a great deal of effort, technical knowledge, and money. As a result, the common approach to hosting a Web site is to outsource the technical hosting of the Web server to someone (like WolfeNet) with a direct connection to the Internet. This means you don't have to worry about hardware, server software, connection costs, networking issues, reliability, etc. Instead, you can focus on what's important to you. Outsourcing your Web hosting is popular, but isn't always the best choice for everyone. If you need to perform specialized tasks over the Web such as making a proprietary database accessible, or running uncommon Web functions that can't be done on WolfeNet's servers, you should consider running your own Web server. Q: What happens if I exceed my prepaid bandwidth by a large amount? A: If it's a one-time deal, you just pay the per-megabyte charge for the extra bandwidth. If you expect your usage to continue at a higher level, we'll let you shift to a more appropriate billing level retroactively, but you must be willing to commit to the new level for 2 additional months. We'll re-bill the previous month at the new rate. You can actually shift up or down this way, but we expect most customers to find that they need more traffic than they predicted, rather than less. Q: What is the difference in shared and Dedicated and Colocation: Shared web hosting is a perfect solution for customers who don't want to have the expense of managing server software, security breaches, etc. Plus, with our scalable account system, we can easily grow your account to meet your future needs. Dedicated is for the customer that prefers to manage their own server and software, with fast, reliable dedicated connections Our co-location service gives your server rock-solid, direct access with unrestricted control of your server that you need. You supply the server and we supply the connection, power (including backup power) and security. Q. What is the difference between Windows 2000 and UNIX? A:UNIX and Windows 2000 are operating systems. Both Windows 2000 Server and Apache server (the UNIX-based Web server operating system WolfeNet uses) are enterprise application servers that can be used for a variety of purposes, including Web, e-mail, and database hosting. Windows 2000 was developed by Microsoft and is, in many ways, the flagship of their software solutions. Microsoft spends millions of dollars developing and supporting Windows 2000. This has both its advantages and disadvantages. While it provides its users with access to an operating system whose development is coordinated and supported under one roof (and thus often simpler in its interface), Windows 2000 also limits its users to those solutions that Microsoft provides. UNIX's development roots begin about twenty years ago -- jointly at Berkeley University and AT&T Bell Labs. UNIX is often referred to as "open source," which means that its source code is publicly available. This has its advantages and disadvantages. While it has allowed many thousands of developers from all over the world working for different companies to contribute to its development (which means, among other things, that many different solutions are available and often free), UNIX's interface can be more complex and its development is less coordinated. Q. What factors should I consider when choosing between hosting my Web site on Windows 2000 or UNIX? A: Both of these operating systems make excellent platforms for mission-critical Web hosting. Some individuals and organizations feel very strongly in favor of one operating system over another. At WolfeNet, we support both platforms in order to provide solutions for all of our customers. When choosing a platform, please keep the following points in mind: * FrontPage is fully supported under Windows 2000. * ASP functionality is supported under Windows 2000. * Active X is supported under Windows 2000. * Remote interactive access, via telnet or SSH, is supported under UNIX only. Generally, you are able to do more configuration/setup tasks via this method on your own rather than having to request services from us. * CGI programs (generally PERL scripts) are supported under UNIX. * MS Access Database is supported under Windows 2000. * PHP is supported on a dedicated UNIX server. Please contact us for details. * iHTML is supported under UNIX. The bottom line is that for many people the operating system on which the Web server is housed is largely inconsequential. The real question is: "Are you using a specific Web site or database technology that is more appropriately hosted on UNIX instead of Windows 2000 (or vice versa)?" WolfeNet offers Web hosting on both platforms in an effort to provide all kinds of hosting solutions. Q. How do I choose the right Web hosting plan? A:You may host any type of site in any of our plans. We provide a variety of Web hosting plans of various user levels and sizes to choose from, the one that's right for your needs depends largely on the following three factors: * disk space * throughput (or data transfer) * Web site content Disk space is the overall amount of space that your site will occupy on our server. It is measured in MB (megabytes). Throughput (or data transfer) is also measured in MB and is generated every time someone visits a page (or downloads a file) on your site and is a cumulative statistic. The more viewers, the higher the throughput. The more complicated your Web site, the more throughput per viewer.