To know How a web hosting server works, you should be first aware of what is web hosting and what is a web server. After understanding those basics, we can look into the web hosting server deeply. If you ever wondered, how the websites are transmitted over the internet where anyone with an internet connection can access by entering the domain name into the browser, this article is for you. Before directly diving to the matter, you should first look into some terms which are necessary to understand the working of a web server. So let’s have a look.
Understanding IP Addresses
An IP address is a numerical address assigned to each device in a network. If the network is in local area where a small number of devices are connected, it is known as a Local Area Connection (LAN). If the devices are in a wide area where they connected to a LAN and the multiple LAN’s then connected with a remote connection is known as a Wide Area Network (WAN.)
As in any network, each website should have their own unique IP address to view them uniquely. IP adresss is a combination of 4 blocks of numbers, each from 1 to 255 separated by periods (244.122.241.100). This makes it possible to deliver the specific websites to the users.
Note: Some web hosting services provide same IP address to multiple websites in shared hosting accounts. So, those websites will not be accessible by the IP addresses. Instead, they use some redirections to resolve the correct domain name assigned to each website on the same IP.
Then How does the Domain Name works?
Now, you know that each website has it’s own IP addresses (Except in shared plans). When you add a domain name to your hosting account, the domain name will not be automatically assigned to the IP address of your hosting. You should manually do it with the DNS (Domain Name System) setup which will specify the location of the name servers that should resolve the name into an IP address.
After setting up the DNS server, it will take some time to propagate all over the internet. This relationship is then completely stored on the hosting provider’s name servers which will resolve all the queries in your website to the domain name.
Now, How a Web Hosting Server Works?
The answer is very simple now. Once a user enters your domain name on the browser, the server will send the data hosted in it to the user’s PC through the internet connection. As the IP address of your server is already connected to the domain name, entering the domain name is enough to get access to the website. Users could also access the websites using their IP addresses (It needs some setup on some web hosting accounts.) For example, the Bluehost.com can be accessed by entering 169.55.100.47 to the browser.
Here, the term Bandwidth coming to existence. If your website is being used by thousands of users at a time, most probably your web server have to send more data simultaneously to all the users. Where the total amount of data sent from the server is considered as the bandwidth.
Now, you got a very basic idea about the functioning of a web hosting server. If you have further doubts, feel free to leave a comment.