Well, i've been thinking, and i'm sorry if this thread has been posted before so if it has then please feel free to delete it. Now to business; well you know there are normal hosting services such as Astahost for example. Astahost and many other hosting services provide a limit amount of space and bandwidth and maybe unlimited MySQL databases.

Well here's the thing; e-mailing services such as Yahoo and Hotmail, must need alot of both space and bandwidth if they want to keep their e-mailing services alive. This is because they need alot of space for storing all the data on the databases and for keeping their sites attractive for the general public. They would also need alot of bandwidth for the many people who visit their sites and use their e-mails like three times every day.

The trouble is, how can these e-mailing services have these facilities, when normal hosts such as Astahost only provide a limited number? What I was thinking, is that maybe there are some special hosting services that deal only with such services as e-mail. This would mean that they would go beyond what normal hosts have to offer and maybe provide unlimited bandwidth and space.

Now I probably know what you're thinking. Just like me, I have been told countless times that such features are impossible to access. Unlimited space and bandwidth ... really? Well maybe with these possible "special hosting services", who knows. Post all your thoughts, comments and suggestions here. Wouldn't it be just great to have an account on a special hosting service ... think of what you could do!!

See as far as I know - leaving apart the web-interface - email services actually take up very little bandwidth and server resources. The POP3/IMAP/SMTP protocols are extremely lightweight, and believe it or not, you can run a decently powerful email server (both incoming and outgoing) on a measly old Celeron 500 with 256MB RAM using Linux.

The only powerful server(s) you'd need is the Web-server - which instead of a single server has to be a load-balanced cluster of http servers to cater to such a huge clientbase.

As for storage space, all of them operate on the shared quota principle. If they were to allow reserved disk quota for all the clients they wudnt find enough HDDs in this world (lol) j/k - but seriously - all of them operate on the idea that some clients will utilize their space to the fullest and some will keep their mailbox completely clean. This averages out the space requirements and IT WORKS FINE (even if in the name of God). Also, they don't use one or two hard drives attached to a single server. They've got these massive Hard Drive Hot-Pluggable Arrays - about the size of a largish refridgerator. You can simply bring in new hard drives and push them into slots into this device and your capacity increases by leaps and bounds. Typically these Disk Arrays have capacities like 100+ Terrabytes.

The only thing I'm unsure of is Bandwidth. That's something they must have in bulk to serve the web-pages to SO MANY surfers every day.. I really don't know how this figure sorts out.

Just to add on to what m^e said, you don't think that Yahoo is buying shared server space do you? Nope, they knock the server offline in no time!

For disk space, you just add 100+ mail servers (as needed though) and you cluser them together. Now, in addition to the mail servers, you need a few clusters of web servers for the sites. I was reading about this over the summer, but if Google and Yahoo had only one main web server, the site would be too slow (even if you had a 320K download rate) and the server would always be under too much stress to operate. So, you add on a few extra servers. Now, you need to set those servers to mirror each other because no one wants to FTP a change to 100 servers. Next, there is a load balancing "switch" (to say) and what it does, is when a request comes in for http://www.google.com, it checks each server for the number of connections and works something like this:

You request http://www.google.com -> load balancing switch checks servers:
SERVER 1: FULL
SERVER 2: FULL
SERVER 3: LOW
SERVER 4: LOW
SERVER 5: MED.
SERVER 6: DOWN
etc.. etc..

In the above senario with only 6 server, first two are a bit crowded so your connection is placed on either server 3, 4, or 5.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that even if you switch a page on a site, it goes through the same process.

(m^e, you wanted to know about bandwidth...)

Now for bandwidth, Yahoo's data center is like none other except that it probably has the Yahoo logo on the building, but each data center works the same. To get online, they purchase dedicated fiber optic lines from several providers such as Savvis, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc. and route them into their super fast network. Some lines may be put on stand by so if lets say the AT&T line goes down, the backup line, such as Savvis, can be activated and so you wouldn't even guess that one of their lines were down. Also, don't think they have a million DSL lines. NO WAY. Most usually have a few OC-93 fiber lines coming into the facility. Just to give you an idea, OC-93 lines are as fast as I think 23 T-1 lines bundled together and have a rate of 9 or 10 gigabits a second! (If they didn't cost like $23,000 a month, I'd get one of these for my network!) This is how they can keep everything fast and accessible! And they probably can burn through several hundred gigabytes A DAY!

Cheers!

[N]F

It seems like this is a pretty debateable topic, thanks both nightfox and m^e for helping shed some light on this. So basically, correct me if i'm worng but does that mean that there are no special hosting services and that e-mailing services such as Yahoo and Hotmail run it by themselves? I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense but it's a bit hazy to me!


So if what you about bandwith is true nightfox, then aren't these e-mailing services spending alot of money? I mean, surely with the millions of people that are visiting their websites and using there e-mailing systems, they would need a hell of alot fibre optic cables. And to run a powerful data center like that would also cost alot of money wouldn't it?

Ofcourse, they are spending a lot of money. Now, you may understand as to why Yahoo or other email services have so much ads on their web-based interface. And they are always trying to find new ways to generate revenue out of their email service. I remember, I read somewhere (but cannot get the link), that Yahoo has come up with a facility where if you pay them a quarter cent per emai, they will ensure that it will be directly put on the receiver's Inbox and would gaurantee that it would not be placed in the Spam folder. I do not know how much of a success this business model would turn out to be, but you get the picture. They spend a lot of money, but they generate a lot more money from selling Ad-space and such things.