Hosting Domains
by roger on Jun.03, 2019,under Uncategorized
The hierarchy of domain name use:
1. A name is registered via a registrar (Fasthosts UK, Godaddy US) who in turn log the details with the overriding register keepers (Nominet UK, ICANN US). Nominet, the official register for uk domain names, can register the domains directly for a user but their costs for a single domain is over £100 (ref needed). Not only does a registrar provide a cheaper option, unlike Nominet they can register at global levels (e.g. dot.com dot.net dot.eu . . .)
2. Registrars like Fasthosts provide a simple option to direct the name to a specific site by setting a [nameserver]. Once this is done the information of where the domain name is connected is transmitted to multiple [Domain Name Servers] across the internet so it is convenient to translate your domain name into a number to connect any client/user/ (computer, browser, phone etc) to the target host computer to serve up websites, downloads and email or connect to a game.
3. Registrars often provide a hosting service where websites and emails can be managed. This is a quick, cheap and efficient way of having a website. It is possible to have you own computer to host a site, but there are many issues you have to maintain yourself.
4. Hosting services vary hugely, some for £5 will provide a basic space with FTP and Mail access, all programmes have to be uploaded personally. Some will provide a ‘site builder’ for £5, and some provide a plethora of CMS, Blogs, Chat Apps, Photo Apps for free, so it makes sense to check a few hosting options before you commit and that may influence your choice of registrar as host and registrar do not need to the same business. It is not insignificant that a host that holds your data is subject to the law of the country the physical hardware resides; you may want to enquire!
5. Your hosts computer has ports(doors) through which clients (users, browsers) are served content (websites, emails, downloads) To do this the host server is connected 24 hours a day and has multiple ways/doors/port to receive requests and to deliver content. As computers work in binary these ports have numbers to identify the type of content so that multiple requests can be received whilst the software is working out what to do.
Once you have set a nameserver for your domain name a specific part of the computer will act as your server with a hidden number, something like, 192.168.0.254, which is often the number of you home router.
invokelegal.co.uk is registered to [mercury.nethostcomputer.com]
my nameserver [server1.rogerlovejoy.net] is hosted there aslo.
So you can access invokelegal.co.uk via:
http://invokelegal.co.uk
http://mercury.nethostcomputer.com/~invokelegalco
http://194.0.252.2/~invokelegalco
http://server1.rogerlovejoy.net/~invokelegalco
http://194.0.252.3/~invokelegalco
So the number 194 . . . is the number computers use to find the site as recorded via Fasthosts and registered on global domain name servers. The server will also have a number for [/~invokelegalco]
Ports are identified by number only and you may see a colon at the end of the domain name followed by a number (invokelegal.co.uk/cpanel or invokelegal.co.uk:2082 /webmail or :2096 etc)
For data to be served as a website it has to be requested via port 80, stored in an HTML format, transferred by the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol and interpreted by a client programme, invariably called a browser(Firefox, Edge etc). The data for the website can be provide by a built in programme on the hosting package or by sending the data (pages) yourself via FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
Emails use [mailto:] protocol
So to manage a domain name you will manage
1. a website,
2. email addresses and
3. File access(uploads and downloads) like dropbox so that you can access files from anywhere using your phone etc.
Although it takes a few routines to get to grips with maintenance once a website is built and emails are established it is just the amount of time you are happy to spend making it work exactly how you want. You can never earn enough to pay someone to do that if you are fussy. So it makes sense to learn the basics and then at least if you decide to pay someone to recreate, update and manage your site and emails, you will have an idea of what is possible and what you are paying for.
A simple hosting package with fasthosts provides 5 email address so either 5 personal or (admin@, info@, conatct@, help@ . . . ) you get the idea.
Each email address will have 2Gbt storage, which at my management level is well over the top. However if you do not download emails to your local compute they will build up and one day you will need more space etc. 99.9% of emails are stored remotely which is a huge waste of resources and insecure.
You may want to keep one email address stored for a month, say info@ so that anyone of you can read it before responding personally. But I suggest you have more specific emails that are downloaded daily to personal computers.
Wil each email address you can set up white(OK) and black(NOT) lists to accept or ban certain people or even whole domains like anyone@google.com not that you would do that one, but I do on my personal account.
You can automated response and loads of other options.
All visits to the website if it not encrypted goes via port 80 on the server, there are thousands of ports most of which are closed for security reasons when not used. A DoS attack is where someone manages a set of computers (BOT) and sends many requests to port 80 for info and the server crashes if it doesn’t have the speed to separate each request and keep a track of each and respond to them.
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