Hosting environment is a term used in

telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

and

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

businesses. Hosting is a relatively new form of business between a

vendor In a supply chain, a vendor, supplier, provider or a seller, is an enterprise that contributes goods or services. Generally, a supply chain vendor manufactures inventory/stock items and sells them to the next link in the chain. Today, these terms ...

and a telecom operator.

About

The vendor normally sells equipment and services to a telecom operator. The equipment and services sold are used to provide a

consumer A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. ...

service, like picture mail or download of ringback tones. Due to the changing telecommunications business and a burst of a very large number of new consumer services, new business models are being created. The common two are revenue share and managed service hosting. This is where the term Hosting Environment comes from. The hosting environment is the physical environment where hosting services are offered from. Typically hosting environment in telecommunication terms would be a ''Network Operating Centre (NOC)'' housing the equipment needed to host a service. In simple words, the Hosting Environment mainly consists of two terms. First, the physical environment where the servers are located. Secondly, it also refers to the environment that you get with your hosting plan like shared, virtual private or dedicated. For example, a virtual private environment provides you with a totally isolated environment on the same server. This can be broken down to include all hardware, including servers, routers and their cabinets. In most cases, the equipment would be rack-mounted and connected through one or more LANs. In order to provide security and allow multiple operators to use the same infrastructure,

firewall Firewall may refer to: * Firewall (computing), a technological barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between computer networks or hosts * Firewall (construction), a barrier inside a building, designed to limit the spr ...

s and sub- LANs may be used. The hosting environment would also include support systems like billing, and provisioning systems as well as Operation and maintenance system. Further, this environment would provide connectivity to one or more telecom networks through gateways. The gateways in a hosting environment would indicate which telecom networks or systems can use the hosted services. As an example if the gateway is connected to a

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...

MSC through an E1 connection then this hosting environment would provide hosted services to a GSM network. Similarly, if the gateway has connectivity for

CDMA Code-division multiple access (CDMA) is a channel access method used by various radio communication technologies. CDMA is an example of multiple access, where several transmitters can send information simultaneously over a single communicatio ...

WCDMA The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a 3G, third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the I ...

then the hosting environment would have services for

and

3G networks 3G is the third generation of wireless mobile telecommunications technology. It is the upgrade over 2G, 2.5G, GPRS and 2.75G Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution, Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution networks, offering faster data transfer ...

as well. The quality of the hosting environment would depend on the level of redundancy and high-available configurations. In best of environments, perhaps a remote site is configured in case of disaster. In a simpler environment, one may not even have mirrored disks. The same goes for O&M equipment and alarm handling. Companies offering telecom grade hosting environment will certainly provide more than 99.99% availability, redundant LANs and a robust SAN (

Storage Area Network A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access data storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries from ser ...

References

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