I need to know how web servers and the internet work.
I have searched for books on the subject. I have searched the internet (ironically), and what I have found is completly basic. The only thing that goes into any great detail is Wikipedia but the descriptions in Wiki just assume that you know what all the parts do and its more of a description of seperate parts rather than telling you how all these parts interact with one another to give you what we all call the "internet". And even then the descriptions dont provide that much explanation.
I have been on WebHostingTalk who just seem to have an innate understanding of how te internet works and have a reluctance to share this knowledge, with the odd person palming me off by directing me to howstuffworks.com which again only has basic information.
I want to know how all the components work and interact with one other so I can properly understand how the internet works. It just seems to me that knowing how the internet works and how web servers work is like some sort of secret, occullt, unknowable knowledge.
Now the reason why I want to know how the internet and web servers work is because I am wanting to set up a serious business built around a website. This website will expand to a great magnitude. Not to mention as a business I want to be in control of the servers seeing as the entire business is built upon the website
PLEASSEEEEE DO NOT TELL ME TO RENT A SERVER OR ANYTHING OF THE SORT; I NEEEED TO OWN THE SERVERS!!!!!
This is what has brought me to Colocation, as, from what i gather, they provide the space (with security and aircon,etc) and the connection but you have to buy the physical server computer and you have to sort it out and look after. Yes i know its cheaper to rent but I am thinking long term, the website has user generated content so i I cant move it ......um unless i back it up and then upload to the new location if i upgraded/moved servers ......can you do that???? I dont know seee this is exactly the sort of thing I am talking about; crucial bits of information that seem so evasive. I am becoming so frustrated at this point because the internet is around us everywhere and being used by everyone and yet no one knows how to use it, either that or no one wants to tell anyone how it works.
Can anyone help??
Accept my friend request, and then I can private message you. I know a little about this topic.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/internetworking/technology/handbook/ito_doc.html
Understanding networking is no easy task
@VA - Thanks for the link and your imput. The link looks very useful so thanks.
@Liberty Student - I have accepted your friend request, but I dont know how to send a private message??
@peachmat: I think what you want to do initially is set up a "project server" and there's lots of articles on the internet on how to do that. Basically, set up a Linux machine with an Apache server. Then, you need to get a domain ("www.something.com") and register the IP address of your server on that domain (I'm a little fuzzy on how this part is done, but again, there's lots of articles on how to do it). I think Apache comes with some default "home.html" or something like that so when you access your domain, (by typing in "www.something.com" into a web browser) that default welcome page will come up. From there on, it's just a matter of "building a website" ... and there are incomprehensibly many web articles on that subject.
Good luck.
Clayton -
@peachmat:
This is what has brought me to Colocation, as, from what i gather, they provide the space (with security and aircon,etc) and the connection but you have to buy the physical server computer and you have to sort it out and look after. Yes i know its cheaper to rent but I am thinking long term, the website has user generated content so i I cant move it ......um unless i back it up and then upload to the new location if i upgraded/moved servers ......can you do that????
Yes, you can and if you are going to be storing customer data, you almost certainly ought to be renting rather than rolling your own servers, especially given how little you know about web serving (not a putdown, just being honest here). There are legal implications to storing customer data... if you expose people's SSNs or other personally identifiable information to hackers through a lack of taking ordinary security precautions, you can be sued to kingdom-come (and, I think, rightly so).
I don't want to be a wet blanket, or anything, but it's pretty rare than a website grows as fast as you think yours will. Facebook started out with just a few hundred users... how many Facebooks are there? In other words, don't count your chickens before they hatch. I recommend you rent a server and, in order to really grasp what web serving is, build a "project server" as I described in my previous post.
I dont know seee this is exactly the sort of thing I am talking about; crucial bits of information that seem so evasive. I am becoming so frustrated at this point because the internet is around us everywhere and being used by everyone and yet no one knows how to use it, either that or no one wants to tell anyone how it works.
No, the problem is that you're researching the technical details of how the web works when what you really want to know are the practical means by which one constructs a web server. Since this is a real business idea you have, I recommend you go talk to a real computer consulting service (one which specializes in web hosting and related services). Yes, it will cost you money, but they will be able to tell you the right way forward.
Like most things in life, the Web is "not as easy as it looks." ;-)
I can tell you that this is not how businessmen look for information. Anyone who can help you with a serious business idea will ignore a request that contains things like:
@Clayton - I looked up project server but it seems like it is a Microsoft thing. I know that I need Apache. What i think i need to do is to have some sort of "practise server" I dont know whether you meant this when you said "project server". Basically the sooner I get this up and running the better, that is why I am keen to get to server ownership stage rather than renting it out from someone else; I want to be that company who has the knowledge of hosting rather than paying someone else to do it for me. Thanks for the heads up on the legal implications of having customer data but thats not what my website will involve. Think of it as a forum like website, there will be no customer information.
Im very interested to know how Facebook went from a college campus network to millions of users, what did Zuckerberg do??? Youre correct, Clayton, that I want to know the technical details of how the internet works when really all I want to know is the practical means of constructing a web server. I guess i am going from one extreme to another on the one hand it seems that all I need to do in order to build a web server is: Buy an actual web server computer, ive been looking into blade servers from HP and IBM because they have largest market share. Once i have the server computer I install Apache on it and various other things like MySQL. I then rent the space for the server at a Colocation data centre where all that is provided is the "connection" to the Internet, the space, and the security and climate control. Now I can start building the website I dont know whether I have to this at the colocation centre or i can do it anywhere that has an internet connection, this might have something to do with "root access" where you have direct access and control to your web server and website. With regards to domain names this is a seperate aspect to having a website. You need to register your domain with a registrar, but this is thing I want to become a registrar so that i have control of the domain name. But anyway. As the website grows and more content is contributed there will need to be more servers Hence my need for colocation because this alows me to do this. Now I dont know if I can do this without colocation and use a dedicated server, and when the time comes for expansion I need to "move" the website i am able to do so because I have backup of the whole website and its content. Eventually if the website grows to Facebook proportions then i will move out of the colocation centre and have to build my own datacentre/server farm, all though I dont know if this is possible because your datacentre needs to have a connection with an internet exchange point. Anyway that is pretty much the extent of my knowledge on how to build a web server. If all of what i have said is correct then i just think to myself that thats to simple and that theres alot that i am missing hence why I want to learn about the tehcnical aspects just to make sure that i havnt missed something.
Computer consultancy is probably a very good idea actually, but I am sure there are thousands of those out there that its difficult to know which is a decent one.