Oversell Hosting
| Article Category: Ecommerce |
created: 01.21.2008 |
updated: 01.21.2008 |
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Oversell Hosting
Everybody seems to be talking about overselling these days. But what is it after all? Well, it's nothing but attracting more clients by a web hosting company than its resources permit. What happens if a web host oversells? Nothing much, only that your website takes longer to load and if the problem is really acute, it might not load at all. Well…well that’s a serious problem and it indeed needs a closer look.Let’s take a quick tour through the technicalities of it all. Suppose your host has at its disposal 120 GB disk space and 1000 GB bandwidth and starts selling plans with 1GB space and 10GB transfer quota. After selling 100 plans the entire available bandwidth gets reserved and you’d normally believe that the host has reached the ceiling its resources would permit and can't sell anymore. But that’s not what happens in reality.It's a common knowledge that not all clients consume the entire bandwidth allotted to them. Even if they do so, hardly all of them do that at the same time. So, the peak level consumption of bandwidth may never cross 350-400 GB. At this stage, the web host feels tempted to rope in more clients without apparently compromising on the promises made to the existing ones.And it makes sound economic sense too. The cost of the server is fixed, so any additional client only goes on to make the bottom-line blacker! Naturally it helps in cutting down the rates and services become that much cheaper. So, you wouldn’t grudge a businessman wishing to increase his profit while offering his services at ever lower rates, would you? And this isn’t a tendency with web hosting companies only. In fact almost all companies operating in service sector oversell.Let's consider telephone companies. Usually these companies oversell many times over their installed capacities. And when a majority of the consumers try to avail of their services at the same time more often than not many of them are not able to connect. It is a very common thing to either get an engaged tone on your phone or a ‘Network busy’ message on your cell on a New Year eve when practically every one of us try to send a message or a two to our near and dear ones. But that occurs only once a while and on normal occasions we don’t have much to complain about services offered by phone companies.However, this need not be the case with hosting companies. Processing power of the CPU together with memory usage and maximum transfer speed has a huge role to play in web hosting. The size and popularity of the websites together with the scripts they use such as SSI, PHP, PERL, ASP etc. determine how much computing power they utilize when they are being accessed. It may so happen that the computing power gets exhausted long before the bandwidth limit is reached. So, overselling might not be the only cause as to why your website is not easily accessible.
Nonetheless, webmasters generally have a negative sentiment towards hosts who oversell. There is this sense of being cheated of what is rightfully due and a lot is being said everyday against the downside of overselling.
Let’s see how the web hosts actually cheat us. Suppose you sign up for 300 GB disk space. There will be at least a hundred others who would do the same. So, the theoretical requirement of disk space would be 30 Terabytes. Now, no web host could afford that. What they instead do is to add a small clause in the agreement that says your service can be cut-off for “excessive use of resources.” What it basically means is they restrict your access the moment they feel that you are exceeding the limit. Exactly same is the case with bandwidth too. As visitors flood in, your CPU usage increases and the CPU cycles your site is consuming goes beyond a certain point. Of course, only the hosting company knows what that particular cut-off point is. It could be 20GB or even 5GB. It's perfectly legal because you’ve agreed to it and this is the point which makes the user feel cheated.Frankly speaking, there is no fool proof method to avoid such cheating. So, while you choose a web host it's always better to depend on recommendations and testimonials of your friends and opt for a company which has been able to create a good reputation among them. Let our Business Web hosting reviews help you choose the right web hosting company for your business.