Overselling

Overselling is an act of over-allocating resources. It takes place in many industries, including the web hosting industry. Some people believe that it isn't necessarily a bad thing, while others have the opposite opinion.

A basic description of overselling

Overselling is where a web hosting provider has (for example) 100GB space and 1000GB data transfer on their server. They sell 150 accounts, each with 1GB space and 10GB data transfer. To some people, this level of overselling is acceptable. It's unlikely that even 100 of the accounts will use their 1GB. The bandwidth is usually a burstable limit, so even if it is reached, the server won't suddenly go offline. More likely, the web host will have to pay the datacentre some overage. There are sufficient resources to provide the service, and the host will probably have the foresight to upgrade the servers as needed.

The consequences of overselling

One of the unforseen consequnces of overselling are the appearance of hosts who market their hosting plans as a product of a "we do not oversell" business practice. Many of these hosts are too small to oversell or have minimal server management experience outside of a control panel and are unable to grasp the operational side of overselling. They turn a lack of resources and/or knowledge into a marketing spiel that ultimately short-changes the customer.
To critics without extensive sever administration experience, overselling is confused with overloading. Let's take the server from the last example but pretend there are 1000 sites on this server. Even if the sites aren't using all the space, chances are that the server will be getting lots of hits from these 1000 sites. Because of this, it will become slower and slower until web hosting customers get fed up and leave.
As you probably have figured out, the number of sites on a server has nothing to do with overselling. In our example, even if the host did not oversell the disk space the number of sites would be the same. Servers don't behave differently because a hosting plan is worded differently!
Another problem is the misunderstanding of what is an "unlimited" hosts. The critics of overselling will tell you there is no such thing as an unlimited hard drive or unlimited bandwidth. Both are finite resources. While this is true, no host is making this claim. Don't confuse unlimited with "infinite." They are two entirely different concepts that are being mashed together by the critics of overselling.
While there is a finite amount of space on a disk drive, the limit is defined by the hosting plan, not the entire drive. "Unlimited disk space" is a hosting plan term, not a new type of hard drive. If you have a 1GB web site, 100GB of space is just as unlimited as an infinite amount of space. Unlimited means: you get as much as you need."
Be wary of the critics of overselling. While most are honest, some use the confusion as a marketing device to sell fewer resources for more money.

Conclusion

Overselling occurs with many web hosts. Overselling in and of itself has no affect on server performance. That's because it is a marketing term and not a technical term. With good server management overselling can lead to an efficient use of resources.
Use good judgment when looking at web hosts. Bear in mind that people who rent server will be paying between $79 and $499 a month for a typical web hosting server. If a host is saying "1GB space and 10GB bandwidth for $1 a year," then they need at least 1000 customers on a $79 a month server to make a profit. And at $79 a month, the server won't be very powerful.

<<<<<<<<<<<<&l
Hi! Readers

Click  Most Updated Discount Coupon Codes & My Personal Web Hosting Recommendations if you are interested in those.
Stay Tuned!
<<<<<<<<<<<<<
__

Article Source : http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ permitted republishing here.