Game servers are usually developed in a form of a standard component that can be found in many games that have a multiplayer option. After this kind of business became popular, hosting companies immediately responded to the growing demand and started offering dedicated servers for online gaming to both those who want to make business and to those who are simply enthusiastic. Generally game server hosting caters to two main groups of online games – those available from the main server, and those that operate through a series of distributed ones.

Centralized servers are mostly often used to host games that require these servers to be able to host thousands of users playing at the same time. The main server stores all the necessary data about the game environment and the cyber world is there 24 hours 7 days a week. The game goes on no matter if the user is online or offline. To participate in the game, a player usually needs special client software that connects to the main server. One of the most popular game using the technology of centralized servers is the World of Warcraft.

Another model is the distributed servers technology. This one is usually utilized by enthusiasts and small businesses. In this model the software is distributed onto several dedicated game servers. As an example, real-time strategies are usually based on this technology. They need frequent updates of the game world that is executed through messaging between users and servers. There should be a master server in this chain to control messaging between the whole bunch of distributed servers. Low latency and fast ping time - that is what needed for this model to be successful and ensure the fast speed of messages reaching the server and coming back to the user. Users usually choose servers with the best ping rates and connect to them to play online. That is why game server hosting companies connect their servers to the fastest networks. Security, operating system and applications tweaking and thorough configuration are also very important.

Hosting providers usually supply their clients with game server hosting services that include the most technologically advanced servers and network connections, very often with the preinstalled software to start online gaming business immediately. The most popular games using the technology of distributed servers are: Doom 3, Medal of Honor, Halo, Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike, Quake 3 etc.

Game server hosting providers are expected to significantly increase their revenue due to such rapid growth figures of online gaming. Many hosting companies have already build up a wide range of special game server hosting offers including even those for $30-40 a month. This is significantly cheaper than many low-performance dedicated servers.

There are thousands of web hosts around today with thousands of plans to choose from making what was once a simple procedure seem like a daunting task for both newbie and pro alike.

Whether you're looking for your first host or looking to move on to a better one there are 7 simple steps you must follow to succeed in choosing a great host.

1. Platform
The first and most crucial step in choosing a web host is determining the platform the web server should run, usually a choice between Unix/Linux and Windows.

Your choice is largely determined by your website and the technologies used to create it, generally a website created with Microsoft technologies (ASP, VB) will run on Windows servers while most other sites using open source technologies (PHP, Perl, Python etc) will run on Linux based systems.

2. Features
Once you've chosen your platform the next step is determining the features you'll need from your web host. Take your time with this step as the feature lists of web hosts are getting longer and longer every day and while some plans may look similar on the surface, a good look at the feature lists may tell another story.

Only you can determine the specific features you'll need, but some key things to keep an eye on are:

Disk Space
Bandwidth
Backups
Uptime
Money Back Guarantee
Domains Allowed
Databases (Number & type)
CGI, PHP, Perl, Python, SSI
Cron
Email accounts

The list goes on and on, just remember to take your time and make sure your new web host is going to provide you with everything you need.

3. Cost
Often this is the only thing people consider when choosing their first web host, funds are usually tight and on the surface most hosts look very similar. Sometimes you get lucky and choose a good host, but more often than not it turns out to be a horror story.

I can't stress enough that choosing a web host based on price alone is asking for trouble, remember that the cost of your web hosting is more than just the monthly fee, think about the total cost of ownership. TCO includes lost sales due to downtime & slow speeds, downtime rebates, extra bandwidth charges, setup costs, extra feature costs, and your monthly fee.

Many hosts will require you to pay yearly to get the best price available though there are some that allow you to pay by the month and still get the best price, it's really a matter of personal choice as to what payment method works best for you.

4. Customer Service
Customer service is another aspect that is often forgotten about until it is too late, something breaks and you need it fixed and those wonderfully handy sales people who were more than helpful in taking your money are now nowhere to be seen, all the while you're losing out on sales every minute.

You shouldn't settle for anything less than 24/7/365 service, your website needs to be running all the time so it's no good if your hosting company doesn't work during the holidays. Don't take the web hosting companies word for it, they all claim 24/7 support but few back it up with consistent performance. Be sure to test them out at various times of the day and night via phone, email and live chat if they offer it.

5. Support
An extensive knowledge base or faq can be a real time saver as well as being an indication of the level of customer service support and expertise you can expect to receive. Spend some time browsing the support sections of the website and see for yourself the level of support provided.

Are questions in the knowledge base answered thoroughly? Are real solutions provided or are they just “cut and pasteâ replies?

6. Longevity
Do a whois on the web host's domain name and find out the creation date, anything less than a year ago and the risk that they won't be around next year increases. They could be a great host, but considering more then 95% of new hosts go out of business within a year that really isn't something you should be taking a chance on.

7. Uptime
It's a fact of life that a web host cannot be online 100% of the time, servers need to be rebooted for security and software updates and any web host that doesn't get updated faces the increased risk of being successfully hacked.

99.9% uptime guarantees are pretty standard in the industry however a guarantee is only as good as how it is defined and the company behind it. Look for no less than a full months free hosting should they not meet their guarantee, a prorated refund based on the amount of downtime is virtually worthless. Say you pay $10 for a month of hosting and your site is down for 24 hours. They will refund you for one day of downtime which ends up being about 33 cents.

There you go, 7 simple steps for choosing a great web host. It's not rocket science, just a little research and investigating that can save a lot of heartache in the future.

Your small business website needs to be hosted on a web server or simply a server (another name for computer) that is connected to the World Wide Web so that anyone can access your website.

Choosing a web hosting company for your small business website is easy if you follow the guide I have layout for you. Depending on the scale of your business, the type of business you run and your level of technical competency, there will always be a right hosting provider just for your business.

The general rule of thumb in choosing a web hosting provider boils down to:

Excellent Customer Support

Company Stability

Robust Datacenter

Affordability

Excellent Customer Support If all things being equal, I would rate customer support as my number 1 determining factor in choosing a web hosting provider. Relying on testimonials found on the provider's site is a common approach to assess a company's level of customer excellence but it is also quite an outdated one. After all it's not uncommon for some providers to fake the testimonials. Instead I suggest you follow my way of assessing their customer support.

Sizing its level of customer support is sometimes as easy as finding out whether they have enough employees to support their level of business growth. You should look at the Customer to Employee ratio, CE ratio, as a benchmark.

For example, according to our records SiteSell Inc has approximately 15,000 customers and employs about 30 support staff, it has a CE ratio of 500 (15,000/30 = 500), you can expect a much higher level of customer satisfaction and a faster response time when compared to another provider who is serving 100,000 customers but only have 75 support staff. Their CE ratio would stand at approximately 1,333. Basically you should look for a professional hosting provider with a low CE ratio.

Getting As Close As You Can The other accurate way to assess the real status of its customer service is to get as close as you can to the company whenever possible via the following means:

Live Chat - Check to see if it's 24/7. It helps to know that you can have your questions answered almost immediately with a live chat function. Test it out by answering some basic questions to see its response time and also test its level of technical competency. Not critical but it's good to have.

Email - Send them a test mail to see how fast they respond, allowed up to 24 hours. Ask about anything but just do not be afraid to ask.

Number of Telephone Lines - Check to see if there are separate telephone lines for sales, customer service and technical support. I hate companies who use only 1 line to serve everyone. A professional small business hosting provider should have this in place. It is not uncommon for reputable providers to charge for telephone support.

Forum - The real condition of any web hosting company's customer support is really found in its members forum if any. You will get a good dose of complains and praises but if the complains outnumber the compliments; it's time to raise a red flag.

Company Stability A company's stability can be measured by the length of time they have been in business, the number of customers they have served and are serving and lastly their financial standing.

Personally as a business owner myself, a web hosting company that has been around for at least 5 years would have weathered all sorts of ups and downs in the online world, and their chance of being around is much higher than a company that has been around for less than 1 year.

Financial Stability Though public listed web hosting providers have better financial transparency than the privately-owned ones, they are not necessary always in a better financial shape than them. Bottom line, you would host your small business with a company that you know is growing in their customer base. For example, Interland having been in business since 1995 is currently serving less than 200,000 websites and this number has been decreasing. It is most likely less profitable when compared to IPower in operation since 2001 and is serving over 400,000 websites as of this writing!

Another aspect of company stability lies in its ability to remain relevant in this highly competitive industry. For example, as the number of internet users increase and streaming multi-media becomes the norm, you want to place your business with a profitable web hosting company who is able to constantly improve on their offerings so that the performance of your website is able to keep up with visitors' expectations.

Robust Datacenter Datacenters are where the web servers are resided on, and ultimately where your webpages will be accessed from. A strong and credible small business web hosting company would have the ability to own and managed their data centers or through colocation.

On one hand it might seem that is the best thing any decent web hosting company would do, but on the other hand, there seems to be a trend whereby the marketing and sale aspect of the hosting business has been outsourced to resellers.

The rationale behind this is quite simple, a web hosting company should focus on what it does best, i.e. make sure all servers are up and running. And a reseller role is to sell the hosting plans and is to focus entirely on doing just that without getting bogged down by technical issues.

Almost all the state of the art data centers should come equip with high level of security, uninterruptible power supplies and most importantly employs the latest technology to enable your website to be always up and running and is always accessible by high connectivity, i.e. fast access to your website.

Affordability Before I elaborate further, it's important to establish that after qualifying a company with the above points, there is no such thing as the best small business web hosting plan, but only the right hosting plan for your business. This is probably the last thing you should look at before deciding on the hosting provider.

Generally there are 2 main types of hosting that are available for you to choose from. They are the Linux web hosting and windows web hosting. Within these 2 platforms there are also another few subcategories of web hosting types that you need to understand before you can finally decide on the right web hosting for your small business.

To continue reading this article, please visit my site Small-Business-Web-Hosting-Guide.com for a no-nonsense approach to assessing web hosting companies for small business owners.