What Is A Virtual Host?

if you’ve been dabbling in web hosting for some time, you’ve probably heard the term “Virtual Host” (or Virtual Hosting). But what exactly is a virtual host?

As you already know, in order for a website to be available 24×7, it needs to be hosted on a web server. And when a web server needs to host multiple websites, we’re talking about Virtual Hosts because each website doesn’t have their own dedicated server.

There are two ways of achieving virtual hosting: named-based and ip-based.

Name-Based Virtual Hosting

When using named-based virtual hosting, all websites hosted a common web server are sharing the same IP address.

When your web browser connects to the web server, it sends the address that you typed into your address bar (the URL) to the web server. The web server then goes through its configuration files to see if there is a website matching the URL requested. If it finds it, it reads the data from the appropriate directory and returns it to the web browser.

Named-based virtual hosting is mostly used by large scale hosting businesses who provide low-cost web hosting.

IP-Based Virtual Hosting

Unlike named-based virtual hosting, websites using ip-based virtual hosting will be sharing a common server but they will all have a different IP address.

When you type a URL in your web browser’s address bar, your computer will first perform a DNS lookup to find out which IP address is corresponding to the URL. It will then query the web server located at this IP address.

When the web server gets the request from the web browser, it will first determine which IP address was used to make the connexion. The server will then go through its configuration file to find a website matching this IP address and will send the requested content to the web browser.

Using an ip-based hosting solution is of course more expensive than named-based hosting since you have to buy an IP address for each of your websites.

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