As the PCs at home or office don’t sit on a public IP address so any files hosted on them can’t be accessed through the internet. They are usually connected to internet through a broadband or dial up connections. So, people take some space, or sometimes a complete server, on rent from a webhost and place a website’s files on that space so that it can be opened through a web browser.

Hosting requires the following setup:

• A high configuration server hardware such as of IBM, Dell, HP, Sun Microsystems, etc.
• A server software which can understand the requests of a web browser such as Microsoft IIS, Apache, Coldfusion, Websphere, etc.
• An operating system such as Microsoft Windows 2000, Red Hat Linux, Ubuntu, Sun Solaris, etc. where the server software runs
• Hardware or software firewalls, anti virus, etc. which are required to fight for hacking attempts
• An environment that is connected to the internet through high bandwidth lines such as T1 or T2.
• An environment that is cool so that servers don’t heat up on the rise of requests.

Web hosts usually choose Data Centres, or Server Farms, to install their servers and sell web hosting.