A hosting service company allows individuals and businesses to make their websites visible and accessible on the World Wide Web.
Comstar is a Hosting Services Provider. We provides several aspects of hosting including website hosting, email hosting, DNS hosting, and server hosting (which is often called colocation).
Hosting a website means providing space on a server that is connected to a high speed, high bandwidth, internet connection out to the virtual world. For most website hosting a website shares a computer with several other websites. For colocation we would put your computer into our data center. In that case your site has its own computer, but it is still connected to our high bandwidth internet connection.
Websites have to be physically located on a server somewhere on the network in order to be viewed and visited by browsers. If you have developed a website on your own personal computer, you must then complete the process by uploading, or transferring, your site to a hosting provider.
Besides hosting websites you can also talk about hosting email. Often email hosting is provided by the same company that hosts your website. But email can be hosted by another provider. While most hosting plans include email hosting too, keep in mind that email and websites are independent functions. They can go together, but they don’t have to.
Hosting, whether it is a website or email or both, needs to start with a domain name. A domain name is used in the web address and the email address. For example, the domain we use for our primary corporate identity is comstar.biz. So our primary website address is www.comstar.biz and an example email address is myemail@comstar.biz.
When you enter a web address into a browser or send an email to someone, the domain is translated into a numerical IP address by something called DNS or Domain Name System. The numerical address tells where to go to find the web site or where to send the email.
Again, DNS is an independent function from the web and email hosting. The DNS could be provided by a company other than your website host or your email host.
Here at Comstar we can keep everything under one roof giving you one point of contact. We offer website hosting, email hosting, and DNS hosting. We manage it all for you so you can keep working, doing what your business does, without having to give the internet technology another thought.