Many people know the story of the Mars Climate Orbiter that crashed due to a difference in units used by two pieces of software. It’s important when communicating that everyone (or every piece of software) is able to communicate accurately so that mistakes don’t happen.
The Internet is by its nature technical. As such some of the terms that are used can be confused or misused. Sometimes small details can be the difference between something working or not working, or in the case of terminology a problem being understood or misunderstood.
One of the words we often use at Runbox that can cause confusion is “hosting”. There are different kinds of hosting and some sound similar or can easily be misunderstood.
If you use your own domain for email or a website you will be paying for domain registration. The company you pay for your domain registration is the domain host. The company may be a registrar, registry or a reseller of registration services.
The registry is the organisation that controls a domain type (like .com) and handles the technical aspect of maintaining the domains registered with them.
A registrar is a company that registers a domain with a registry and in line with the rules that the registry has.
Runbox is a reseller of a registrar’s services (Enom) and we don’t register any domains directly with a registry.
Email Hosting
This is one of the main services that Runbox provides. Email hosting is the name for the service where Runbox receives email that is sent to addresses using your own domain. We allow you to send and receive email using your domain and provide all the associated features such as storage for your messages and a way to access them through our web app.
You can use a different company for your email hosting to the one you use for web hosting if you want to.
Web Hosting
Web hosting is the service you use if you have a website. Just like email hosting this is a specialist service that is often unrelated to other types of hosting.
As already mentioned, you don’t need to use the same company for web hosting and email hosting. This allows you to pick the best mix of services for your own needs.
DNS Hosting
This is probably the service that people hear the least about, and yet without it services on the Internet would stop working.
DNS is short for Domain Name System and this is the service that converts runbox.com in to an numerical IP (Internet Protocol) address when you put it in your web browser. IP addresses are what the Internet runs on and they tell computers called routers where to send data to.
We mentioned above that you can use the same or different companies for your email and web hosting. To be able to do that there has to be some way for Internet routers to know where to send the data.
Domains have something called DNS records, and these are held on servers called name servers (domain name servers). The registry that controls a domain holds a record of where on the Internet the name servers for a particular domain are. Other Internet services can then ask the name servers for the details of where email should be delivered or a web page requested from.
Confusion with the hosting types
In our experience one of the reasons the different hosting types can cause confusion is because many companies provide all of the services above in one package.
By doing that they can be a single point of contact for a domain user and this can be very useful. It also means they don’t have to worry too much about the terminology used as they can simplify things. However, this limits the amount of experience their customers get of how the various hosting types actually work. This can then cause confusion later when they want to do something different with their domain.
For any particular domain it’s possible (and not uncommon) that all four hosting services mentioned above are provided by different companies who each specialise in a particular type of service.
Runbox Hosting Services
Runbox provides domain registration services via our domain partner (Enom) and along with that we automatically provide the DNS hosting service. You need to have an email account with us before you can use the registration service and so if you register a domain we will automatically set up the DNS hosting so email to your new domain goes to your existing Runbox account.
You are then able to use our web app to configure your domain’s DNS records for things like web hosting and other Internet services.
If you need more information about hosting services or have any questions about this blog post please contact Runbox Support.