My progress
Menu

Level 1 · Digital Foundations · Course 1.2 Networking and the Internet

Module 7: Servers and Hosting

Goal: understand what a server is, the main ways to host a website or app, and what uptime and bandwidth mean when you choose a plan.

You'll need: nothing but curiosity. If you have a hosting account (like Hostinger), keep it open to compare.

Lessons

  1. 1The client-server model15–25 minutes✓
  2. 2Shared hosting15–25 minutes✓
  3. 3VPS and dedicated servers15–25 minutes✓
  4. 4Cloud hosting15–25 minutes✓
  5. 5Uptime and bandwidth15–25 minutes✓

🛠️Module practice: choose hosting for three ideas

For each idea, choose shared hosting, a VPS, or a cloud/app platform, and give one reason:

  1. A lawyer's office website with five pages and a contact form.
  2. A tutor-booking app with logins and a database (from the Builder Path, Lesson 1).
  3. A results-announcement site that's quiet all year but gets a huge spike one week a year.

✅Module check

Explain in a few sentences, in your own words:

What's the difference between shared hosting, a VPS and cloud hosting, and how do you choose?

Show a good answer

A good answer mentions: shared hosting is cheap and managed, but limited and shared with others; a VPS is your own virtual server with guaranteed resources and full control, and you're responsible for maintaining it; cloud hosting rents flexible building blocks that can grow and shrink, billed by use. You choose by what the app needs, its traffic pattern, the budget and who will look after it.

📝Module quiz

10 questions · 10 marks each · 100 marks in all · pass mark 70% · retry as often as you like ·

1. When WhatsApp on your phone sends a message, which is the client?

Why each option is right or wrong

  • “The person you're messaging, who receives it” (Incorrect): Their app is also a client. Both phones talk to the servers, not directly to each other.
  • “WhatsApp's data centre computers that store your chats” (Incorrect): Those are the servers: they answer requests from the apps.
  • “Your SIM card, which connects the phone to the network” (Incorrect): The SIM identifies you to your mobile network. It doesn't make app requests.
  • “Your phone app” is correct.

    In the client-server model, the client makes requests and the server answers them. Your WhatsApp app sends the message to WhatsApp's servers, which store it and pass it on.

    • Client: the app or browser that asks.
    • Server: the computer that answers, usually in a data centre.
    • Roles, not machines: the same computer can be a client for one thing and a server for another.

📖 Revise: Lesson 1: The client-server model

Question ID module-07-q1 · Report a mistake in this question
2. Can a normal laptop be a server?

Why each option is right or wrong

  • “Only if it is running Windows Server edition” (Incorrect): Any operating system can run server software. Most servers run Linux, not Windows.
  • “No, never, because servers are special machines” (Incorrect): A server is defined by what it does, not its shape. Your laptop serves pages whenever you run a local app.
  • “Only after buying a special server licence and installing server-grade parts” (Incorrect): Most server software is free. No licence makes a computer 'a server'.
  • “Yes: a server is a role, though a laptop isn't built for it” is correct.

    Any computer that answers requests is acting as a server. When you run your app on localhost, your laptop is a server. Real servers differ in being built to run non-stop, with steady power, cooling and a fast, reliable connection.

    • Fine for: development and testing.
    • Not for: a public site, because laptops sleep, overheat, move, and sit on home connections with low upload speed.

📖 Revise: Lesson 1: The client-server model

Question ID module-07-q2 · Report a mistake in this question
3. You built a simple HTML and CSS website. Is shared hosting enough?

Why each option is right or wrong

  • “Only if you add a database to store the pages” (Incorrect): Static pages are plain files. They need no database at all.
  • “No, a static site needs its own dedicated server” (Incorrect): A dedicated server is huge overkill for a handful of files.
  • “No, you need a whole cloud cluster to serve HTML” (Incorrect): Clusters are for large, complex apps, not a few HTML and CSS files.
  • “Yes, static sites need very little” is correct.

    A static site is just files the server sends as they are. It needs almost no processing, so cheap shared hosting, or a free static host, handles it easily.

    • What 'static' means: no server code runs per visit; every visitor gets the same files.
    • Even cheaper: static hosts like GitHub Pages or Netlify, often with a CDN built in.

📖 Revise: Lesson 2: Shared hosting

Question ID module-07-q3 · Report a mistake in this question
4. Your VPS gets hacked because nobody installed security updates for a year. Whose job was it?

Why each option is right or wrong

  • “Nobody's, because hacks can't be prevented anyway” (Incorrect): Most hacks use known, already-fixed holes. Updating prevents a great deal.
  • “The visitors' job, since they used the hacked site” (Incorrect): Visitors have no access to your server and no way to update it.
  • “The hosting company's, since they own and run the physical hardware” (Incorrect): On shared or managed hosting, yes. On a VPS, the operating system is yours to maintain.
  • “Yours: on a VPS, the system and its updates are your responsibility” is correct.

    A VPS gives you your own virtual machine with full control. The host keeps the physical hardware running; everything inside the machine, including updates, is up to you.

    • Control comes with responsibility: you choose the software and you patch it.
    • Make it easy: turn on automatic security updates and check them monthly.
    • Or choose managed: a managed platform patches the system for you.

📖 Revise: Lesson 3: VPS and dedicated servers

Question ID module-07-q4 · Report a mistake in this question
5. Your app is quiet all year but gets huge traffic in exam results week. What fits best?

Why each option is right or wrong

  • “A large fixed server, paid for all year so it is ready for the peak” (Incorrect): It handles the peak but wastes money the rest of the year.
  • “Your home computer, upgraded with more memory” (Incorrect): A home connection and one machine can't handle a national-scale spike.
  • “Shared hosting, since it costs the least all year” (Incorrect): Cheap the rest of the year, but shared hosting can't absorb a huge one-week spike.
  • “Cloud hosting that scales up that week, then back down” is correct.

    Cloud hosting lets you add capacity when demand rises and remove it afterwards, paying only for what you use. That suits traffic with one big peak.

    • Fixed servers waste money: sized for the peak, they sit idle for 51 weeks.
    • Small servers crash: sized for normal weeks, they fall over on results day.
    • Also: load-test before the peak so you know scaling really works.

📖 Revise: Lesson 4: Cloud hosting

Question ID module-07-q5 · Report a mistake in this question
6. Is "serverless" code running without any server?

Why each option is right or wrong

  • “No, it runs on a USB stick plugged into the provider” (Incorrect): It runs on normal servers in data centres.
  • “Yes, it runs on each user's phone instead” (Incorrect): Code on the user's phone is client-side code, not serverless.
  • “Yes, it runs inside the domain name itself” (Incorrect): Domain names are labels in DNS. They can't run code.
  • “No, it runs on servers you don't have to manage” is correct.

    'Serverless' is a name for a hosting style. Your code still runs on servers, but the provider starts, scales and maintains them, and you pay per use.

    • Good fit: short tasks triggered by events, like a form submission or webhook.
    • Trade-offs: time limits per run, and 'cold starts' when a function hasn't run recently.

📖 Revise: Lesson 4: Cloud hosting

Question ID module-07-q6 · Report a mistake in this question
7. A host promises 99.9% uptime, and your site was down for 2 hours last month. Did they keep the promise?

Why each option is right or wrong

  • “Only if the outage happened during the night” (Incorrect): Uptime counts every hour, day or night, unless the SLA says otherwise.
  • “Yes, 2 hours a month is comfortably within a 99.9% uptime promise” (Incorrect): 99.9% allows about 44 minutes a month, so 2 hours is well over.
  • “Uptime promises never count real downtime anyway” (Incorrect): They do. That's the whole point of an uptime promise.
  • “Probably not: 99.9% allows only about 44 minutes a month” is correct.

    A month has about 43,800 minutes. 0.1% of that is about 44 minutes. Two hours is nearly three times that.

    • Read the SLA: it defines how downtime is measured and what compensation you get, often service credits.
    • Scheduled maintenance: some SLAs exclude announced maintenance windows.

📖 Revise: Lesson 5: Uptime and bandwidth

Question ID module-07-q7 · Report a mistake in this question
8. Your homepage auto-plays a 25 MB video. What does that do?

Why each option is right or wrong

  • “Nothing much, because videos are free to send” (Incorrect): Every byte costs bandwidth and time, for you and the visitor.
  • “It lowers hosting costs because videos are cached” (Incorrect): Caching helps repeat visits, but each new visitor still downloads 25 MB.
  • “It makes the page load faster by preloading content in the background” (Incorrect): A large file competes with everything else on the page, making it slower.
  • “Every visitor downloads 25 MB, slowing the page” is correct.

    Every visitor's browser downloads the video whether they want it or not. On a slow or metered phone connection that can take a long time and cost the visitor data, and your hosting pays for the bandwidth too.

    • Better: compress it heavily, show a poster image, and load the video only when someone presses play.
    • Or: host it on a video platform that streams efficiently.

📖 Revise: Lesson 5: Uptime and bandwidth

Question ID module-07-q8 · Report a mistake in this question
9. Why might shared hosting refuse to run your always-on chat server?

Why each option is right or wrong

  • “Chat servers need more disk space than shared plans give” (Incorrect): Chat messages are small. The limit is long-running processes and open connections, not disk.
  • “Running a chat server is illegal on shared hosting under most terms” (Incorrect): It isn't illegal; it's limited for resource reasons.
  • “Shared hosting has no internet connection for apps” (Incorrect): Shared hosting is online. It just limits long-running programs.
  • “Shared servers limit long-running programs” is correct.

    On shared hosting, hundreds of sites share one machine. A program that runs forever and holds many open connections could hog resources, so hosts often block or kill long-running processes.

    • Use instead: a VPS or an app platform that supports long-running processes and WebSockets.
    • Check first: hosting plans list what they allow.

📖 Revise: Lesson 2: Shared hosting

Question ID module-07-q9 · Report a mistake in this question
10. What's the main difference between a VPS and shared hosting?

Why each option is right or wrong

  • “There's no real difference apart from the price” (Incorrect): Control and responsibility differ hugely.
  • “A VPS is always cheaper than shared hosting plans” (Incorrect): VPS plans usually cost more, because you get dedicated resources.
  • “Shared hosting gives you full root access to the whole shared server” (Incorrect): Shared hosting doesn't give root access, since other customers use the same machine.
  • “A VPS is your own virtual machine, with full control” is correct.

    Shared hosting places your site alongside many others in an environment the host manages. A VPS is a virtual machine reserved for you: you get root access to install anything, and you take on the upkeep.

    • Shared: easy, cheap, limited.
    • VPS: flexible and powerful, but you install updates and secure it.

📖 Revise: Lesson 3: VPS and dedicated servers

Question ID module-07-q10 · Report a mistake in this question

ProLearners Assist