Do you need some e-real estate?  Hosting is the service that gives you "space" on the internet.  There are several methods to achieve this, however there is a lot of mis-information floating about, the RuttenTech team recommend caution in selecting your web hosting.  We would welcome a discussion with you on hosting options, all you need to do is contact us.

There are three basic types of hosting generally available.

Free Internet Hosting

This is the type of hosting made famous by "geocities" and has many outlets over the e-world.

• Pros:  It's free.
• Cons: You get a torturous domain name (eg. www.hostname.com/users/~yourname) and it is highly likely that you will get unwanted advertising attached to your site.

Internet Service Provider Hosting

Most Australian Internet Service Providers (ISP) will offer you some space with a dialup or broadband access account.  A good option for personal or fun pages.

• Pros:  It's free if you have an account with the ISP
• Cons: You usually have a limited space (2 Mb, 10Mb etc.), you will get a torturous address (eg. www.hostname.com/users/~yourname).

It is technically possible to use your proper domain name with this service, but not advisable.  Please contact us if you would like to know more about this.

Commercial Hosting

This is by far the best hosting option for any business or organisation that would like a dedicated domain name. 

This option will usually give you a large amount of space, plus a large "bandwidth" limit for your site.  The bandwidth limit is the amount of "transfers" that are allowed to your site.  As an example if you start hosting a movie download site you can expect to get thousands of downloads per hour and this will test your bandwidth limit.  In most applications your limits are usually generous and rarely exceeded. 

Commercial hosting allows you to use your domain name as it is, and usually comes with a mail server that will allow you to use your own mail system (eg. yourname @ yourdomain.com)

• Pros: Good marketing, features, limits and is portable regardless of who or where you dialup with.
• Cons: A little more expensive, making it good for business, but less attractive for personal/fun pages.