CDNs compared: CloudFlare vs MaxCDN

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Content Delivery Networks across the board offer numerous benefits, from increased speed to improved performance and SEO. However, CDN services can differ depending on the company. CloudFlare and MaxCDN are two in particular that have been recognized for their CDN services, and although both share some overlapping features, they also possess their own distinctive features. At the end of the day, it comes down to which CDN service best suits your individual needs.

What CloudFlare’s CDN Looks Like

CloudFlare may be well-known to some as the company that handled the largest DDoS attack in Internet history, which says a lot about their ability to handle matters of security. One of the most appealing features of CloudFlare’s CDN services is that it focuses not only on increasing site performance, but providing benefits to other aspects of hosting as well, including security.

To break it down, these are the more distinctive features of CloudFlare’s CDN:

  • Security – CloudFlare’s services help their users safeguard against a variety of potential security threats, including DDoS, comment spam, SQL injections, and malicious bots.
  • Their network consists of 31 data centers – while most of these are located in North America and Europe, these network servers are also spread across the globe in six continents.
  • Up-to-date Performance Notifications – CloudFlare provides users with notifications of any performance updates at its data centers, which is convenient for monitoring.
  • Optimization features – CloudFlare offers several ways in which you can optimize your website, including asynchronous resource loading, browser caching, JavaScript bundling, and cache header optimization.
  • Analytics Page – Here, users can view the analytics of their website’s traffic, page views, and any threats or bots.
  • No additional cost for CDN – While CloudFlare’s pricing goes by a four-plan structure (Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise), the CDN service itself does not add additional cost.

What MaxCDN’s CDN Looks Like

While CloudFlare excels in its provision of increased security, MaxCDN has been recognized for its speedy performance and features. One of the biggest cons that has been identified in using MaxCDN is that it is not a free service; however, having to pay for quality features is not a deterrent for everyone, and to be fair, most quality features you may want for your CDN service are worth the small price to pay.

Distinctive features of MaxCDN:

  • 57 Data Centers – Although not quite as widespread globally, MaxCDN does have have data centers predominantly located in North America and Europe.
  • Control – Compared to CloudFlare, MaxCDN offers more control in cache file settings and divides them into three types for storage – pull zones (regular files), vod zones (videos and streaming), and push zones (larger files)
  • Reports Section – This gives you information such as what files are being viewed and from where.
  • Two-step Authentication Process – Admittedly weaker than CloudFlare in security, and MaxCDN doesn’t offer protection against SQL injections or DDoS attacks
  • Pricing Based on Site Bandwidth – MaxCDN pricing is based on your website’s use of bandwidth per month.
  • 24-hour Support

Conclusion

Both companies offer benefits in their CDN services. Which service is better really depends on a user’s needs and preferences. Most will admit that, if security is a prime concern, in general, CloudFlare comes up on top. However, when it comes to the features, cache services, and customer support, although MaxCDN’s service isn’t free, in those respects many prefer that investment. By identifying your own needs for your website CDN and security, both companies offer quality services.

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Cloud Hosting Service

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When you have a processing resource and data that you want to share with other devices or computers, you can use the cloud hosting service. It is a type of Internet hosting and this service will provide you with on demand access that is ubiquitous. Then, you can use this access and share your configurable resources, servers or networks or even applications by using this method. It was supposed to help you with minimizing your efforts when you are accessing a pool of servers or networks. Various storage solutions and cloud hosting were designed to provide the users and clients with storage capabilities and process all data in order to share the resources, achieve scale economy and market coherence. This web hosting service is on the rise for the past 8 years because of the availability of low cost computers, high capacity networks and storage devices.

The widespread of virtual hardware, architecture and autonomic computing are what gave the opportunity to cloud hosting to grow and evolve. The companies figured out how they can use this method of a web hosting service to lower their costs and avoid buying all the expensive computer infrastructure. The fact is that cloud computing allows the companies to get their apps running much faster and the overall manageability grew rapidly as well as the ability to adjust their resources to meet the unpredictable demands of the online market. The business demands are always changing due to the fact that the Internet changes too. The advantage of cloud hosting over all other services is in that ability to adjust to those changes, quick and easy. It is the web hosting answer to the ever changing Internet reality.

The rules are constantly changing

Cloud Hosting has been around for more than 30 years and it is constantly changing. This web hosting service is nothing more than a result of the online Internet evolution and the adoption of technology that helps it to thrive and further develop. It has only one main goal and that is to give the opportunity to the Internet users to harness the power of the modern technology and use it for their own benefit. It can help the users to focus on their own business instead of solving the IT obstacles and problems and thus, cut the expenses, leaving more funds for the future business endeavors. This web hosting service gives you a certain advantage because it can locate and provide you with idle computing resources and make their usage much easier.

In the world of web hosting, there is no easy way because everything is happening for a reason and math is the only law. There are certain methods and ways how you can keep things in control but, since the technology is always evolving and so is Internet as well, you can never predict what will happen.

That is why it is very important to keep all web hosting services in your mind before you start your own web site.

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Host Management

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If you want to manage the web server, you will need a control panel or an interface to do so. If a web server is not using a control panel, it is then referred to as headless server. The host is responsible for installing scripts, service applications, and other modules. They can even be specialized in certain services or software. In this case a control panel would be an interface that is web based and it is usually provided by the web hosting company. The customers are allowed to manage their web hosting services, using a single place. These services can vary from getting access to server logs, finding the details of already used and available web space and the recommended bandwidth or even an email account configuration.

Reliability and Web Hosting Uptime

When a percentage of public accessibility of a particular web site is really high, you can refer to that web site as a reliable source of data. This method is usually used for measuring the availability of one web site, and it is quite different from measuring the uptime of a particular system. The time that one system is being online is referred to as the uptime. There is another term, closely related to the uptime and that is downtime. It is a period of time when one system is unavailable or inaccessible. It also has another name, an outage duration and it refers to a period when a system is unable to perform its functions. When a system has a high availability, it usually means that one particular system has a high level of operational performance or the uptime, during which it is able to perform all the necessary and primary functions.

Internet service providers are usually the ones that will be offering you web hosting services. They are organizations that are able to provide you with accessing services on the Internet. It is usually up to clients and customers to decide which hosting service they need. The type of a service is usually determined by the requirements of the system or the application that they want to host on the Internet. Before they can make a decision, a lot of factors and elements need to be taken into their consideration. Factors like scripting software, database server, and operating system are the most important ones. These factors will decide which web hosting service a certain clients needs.

Security – The Most Important Factor Of Successful Web Hosting

Online Security is one of the most important concerns. It is your plan B in case of the what if situation and is a mean to amend all the damage that might come from any unexpected system failure. When it comes to all online activities, security and protection are the foundation that is allowing your activities to thrive, evolve and prosper. It is also your only protection from malicious users, malware, various viruses or malicious codes that you can come across. Keep your system completely protected.

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Clustered, Grid and Home Server Web Hosting

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Web hosting can be extremely hard on a machine. That is why sometimes, it is needed to share that load with multiple machines. If you do not want your system to overload, clustered hosting will take care of the load and spread it across multiple machines in order to increase the efficiency of your system. This way, you are largely decreasing the chance of one service affecting another which means that you are making sure to avoid any kind of problems. Clustered hosting solution is usually the best option if you want to host a really large website on the Internet. It can help with the better resource utilization and at the same time, you can have the same content hosted on multiple different servers. This type of web hosting is considered to be the most efficient one when large systems are at stake.

Why is clustered hosting needed?

The answer is quite simple. One machine is not enough or reliable enough in order to support large systems. It is not that something can go wrong, the problem is that one machine has a finite capacity for data traffic. By clustering machines and with the usage of load balancing, you can make all those problems disappear and ensure increased availability of your website.

Grid hosting means distributed hosting. It is a case when a cluster of servers becomes a grid and acts like it. This grid is usually composed of nodes. Node can usually be a hub, modem, switch or bridge or even a host computer. It is a device that is usually attached to a network and it creates, transmits and receives information over a particular channel. Grid hosting is a completely different thing from a home server.

Home Server and a Broadband connection

A home server usually means one machine or a single system that can be used to hosting one or more websites via broadband connection. This type of connection is immensely useful for wide bandwidth data transmission which is necessary for any kind of web hosting. Put in simple words, it is the way of gaining high speed Internet access that is not having any kinds of failures and is always on. A typical example of a broadband connection medium would be an optical fiber or a coaxial cable.

Specific types of web hosting

Among many types, these are the most common ones that the clients ask for usually.

File hosting – hosts only files, web pages are not included

Image hosting – allows individuals to put on images to a website

Video hosting – an individual user is allowed to upload business or personal videos

Blog, paste bin, shopping cart software and e-mail hosting service.

The interesting thing about an email hosting service is the fact that this service is usually premium priced. This service means that Internet host is operating email servers.
Among many types of web hosting, there are two more terms that are important, host management and reliability.

 

 

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Web Hosting Services

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Since web hosting companies are literally offering you the chance to use their servers in order to get your place under the Internet sun, depending on your needs, there is a pretty big scope of web hosting services. Many hosting companies are offering some basic and common services for free. For example, if you have one web page that you would like to promote, usually you will get this kind of a service for free but, if you are a large company which has a complex website that needs more serious approach when it comes to database support and application development platforms, those kinds of services are coming with a certain price. One of those services would be reseller web hosting. This allows clients to play a role of a web host, taking the responsibility of the technical support themselves as well as for the entire shared hosting plan.

Virtual Private Server (VPS)

Virtual Private Server (VPS) or a virtual dedicated server has a function of dividing server resources into single virtual servers. This way, the users can get a root access to their own virtual online space. VPS can also provide a client with server admin tasks for a particular customer.

Dedicated hosting implies that the user can get his own web server as well as root access for administrator access. This way, the user gains full control over the server. There are two types of dedicated hosting, managed and unmanaged. This only means that the user has full access but, the client takes care of maintenance and security of his own server.

Colocation and colocation web hosting

Colocation is just a type of data center that you can rent to the clients or potential customers. It is supposed to provide a client with space, cooling, power and security for the networking equipment, storage and server, and connect them also to various service providers for a fair price, quick and easy. Colocation web hosting means that the user can use the colocation server and the hosting company will take care of the server. The company will also provide the space for the server. This type of service is considered to be the most expensive but it is also considered to be the most powerful one too.

With the recent technology developments, new hosting services are emerging and one of those services is cloud hosting. It is a completely new type of a hosting platform that proved itself to be immensely efficient. Cloud hosting is directly related to cloud computing, a type of computing that is entire Internet based and it is supposed to provide processing resources and various data from shared computers to any other devices when requested to. This type of hosting service is the most popular one lately, especially with the big companies who have huge needs and demands for shared data and massive computer systems. In the everyday practice, cloud hosted websites proved to be more reliable than the alternative ones due to the ability of compensation.

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The Introduction To Web Hosting

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Web hosting service is what allows individuals and organizations to make their website contents accessible via the Internet. There are a lot of procedures and facts that one needs to know before he starts dealing with web hosting. Before we continue, it is important to understand what the Internet hosting service stands for. It is a service that allows the Internet servers to run, allowing the online users to put their content on the Internet and the most common kind of hosting is web hosting. Web hosting companies are here to make sure that a client gets provided with a server space and the Internet connectivity in a data center. If a server provides a data center space for other servers that is called colocation. If you want to host your website on the Internet, you will need a server. However, servers are pretty expensive and that is where web hosting companies step in.

Web Hosting – Your Window to the Online World

The main goal of web hosting companies is to provide you with a server that you can use to host your website on the Internet. It is like giving an address directions to your site location so that your potential clients could find you quick and easy. That is why these companies are offering to host websites of online users on their own hosting servers. There is a huge number of web hosting services. It is important to know that web servers can be run by the Internet hosting services. The most basic web hosting service and the most wanted one is the small scale file hosting and web page hosting. These services are usually offered to clients for free. Files can be uploaded using a web interface or the file transfer protocol. It is a standard network protocol utilized for files transferring from a server to a client on a computer network.

This is also known as the Client server model. There is also free web hosting and it usually implicates limited services. If a client has a personal web page that needs hosting, this service usually comes for free. Individuals and small companies do not have very big demands because their needs are not great but, this changes with bigger companies and organizations. Depending on a site complexity, a different and larger hosting service is needed. Application development platforms and database support are usually the most needed services since a more complex site demands a comprehensive hosting package. The security of transmitted data is a very important factor when it comes to larger web hosting services for more complex websites. One of those services is shared web hosting. It is a situation when one site is on the same server with many others because these sites can all share a common server resource such as CPU or RAM memory. This type of service has its own flaws when it comes to updates and software properties but it will do the job.