XLHOST BLOG

It has been more than 20 years since XLHost began hosting amazing content and applications for our thousands of awesome customers in more than 130 countries. Everyone at XLHost is tremendously excited about this milestone and we thought that it might be fun to look back at some of the history of our company and how it has evolved since 1995.

4/13/1995 - The domain ee.net was registered
5/23/1995 - eNET provisioned it's first dedicated server. The server was a Pentium 75 with 16MB of RAM and a 12GB hard drive.
4/10/1996 - eNET was assigned IPv4 addresses by ARIN.
1/24/1996 - The Internet wayback machine was launched, this is what ee.net looked like in 1996.

1/5/2000 -  The XLHost brand was launched

12/1/2003 - The XLHost product lineup continues to expand

1/14/2005 - The oldest customer dedicated server still in production was provisioned.
11/7/2006 - Grande V1 was released

11/9/2006 - XLHost began offering Virtual Private Servers
4/1/2008 - Datacenter expansion completed (DC 4)
2/9/2010 - eNET/XLHost was assigned IPv6 addresses by ARIN
7/19/2011 - Datacenter expansion completed (DC 5)
3/19/2013 - Grande V3 was released

3/19/2013 - XLHost Cloud was released
1/10/2014 - Datacenter expansion completed (DC 6)

Even with all of the effort that we have put into making XLHost the best infrastructure provider in the world, without the support of our awesome customers and our amazing partners/vendors throughout the years we wouldn't be here.

All of the employees of XLHost and their families are sincerely grateful for the opportunities to serve and the trust you have given us over the past 20 years. We look forward to serving you for another 20 years.

Thank you!

Please feel free to share any memories or thoughts you have with us regarding the last 20 years in the comments! We would love to hear any stories you would like to share.

XLHost just recently launched the XLHost cloud services portfolio which includes cloud servers and a CDN. They are off to a roaring start and if you haven't tried these services yet I would encourage You to do so. The cloud services portfolio has been designed to enhance and augment our dedicated hosting offering.

Existing XLHost customers can use our cloud services by visiting Grande or new customers can

This is a brief introduction to CDN and XLHost's CDN service.

What is a CDN?

The most basic definition of CDN (content delivery network) is a globally distributed network of servers which maintain local copies of your web site and/or application content. A CDN can also be used to stream live video from a single location to consumers globally.

How does a CDN work?

All CDNs use DNS as the mechanism to decide which edge server to direct your customers to. You will simply create a DNS record (for example) cdn.yourdomain.com which points to the CDN service. When the user's browser looks up cdn.yourdomain.com it automatically returns the IP address of the closest CDN edge server. You control what content will be served by the CDN by simply editing your web site or application HTML and changing links from www.yourdomain.com to cdn.yourdomain.com. Most CMS and blog platforms can do this automatically.

There are two basic methods for a CDN to get your content; HTTP push and HTTP pull. With HTTP push, you upload files either manually or automatically to a distribution point and then the files are distributed out to the edge servers. With HTTP pull, the edge servers automatically pull your content into their local caches, customizible cache settings determine what files will be cached, when the cached files will expire, and much more.

How can I use a HTTP Push/Pull CDN?

A CDN is used for static content which does not require dynamic processing such as image files, css files, javascript libraries, and flash client files. These files make up the bulk of the loading time for a web site or application and as such they should be downloaded as quickly as possible. 

How does a CDN benefit me?

A CDN gives you global reach without the expense of managing a separate presence in every region your customers are in. Having your content distributed globally decreases load times which improves your user experience.

A great example of a use-case for CDN is a social media application or game which requires a large flash download before the user can interact with the content. The faster you can get your user into your game or application the more time the user can spend interacting with your content and (hopefully) generating revenue.

The XLHost CDN

XLHost currently has 38 CDN edge servers deployed in 5 regions: North America, Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia. We are constantly adding more edge servers and You can fully customize your deployment to meet your needs. Pricing starts at $49/TB for North America/Europe. There are no long term commitments and XLHost can even help you get started.

The XLHost CDN is completely self service and managed in the cloud services control panel within Grande. It can also be managed via the API.

As always with anything you see here on the blog, if you have any questions please

-Drew