PRESENTED BY AMIT PAL SINGH

WEB SERVER DEFINITION

Web server can refer to either the hardware (the computer) or the

software (the computer application) that helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet.

CLIENTS AND SERVERS

In general, all of the machines on the Internet can be

categorized as two types: servers and clients. Those machines that provide services (like Web servers or FTP servers) to other machines are servers. And the machines that are used to connect to those services are clients. When you connect to Yahoo! at www.yahoo.com to read a page, Yahoo! is providing a machine for use on the Internet, to service your request. Yahoo! is providing a SERVER. Your machine, on the other hand, is probably providing no services to anyone else on the Internet. Therefore, it is a user machine, also known as a CLIENT.

IP Addresses
Each machine on the Internet is assigned a unique

address called an IP address. IP stands for Internet protocol, and these addresses are 32-bit numbers normally expressed as four "octets" in a "dotted decimal number." A typical IP address looks like this: 216.27.61.137
The four numbers in an IP address are called octets because they can have values between 0 and 255.

 Every machine on the Internet has a unique

IP address. A server has a static IP address that does not change very often. A home machine that is dialing up through a modem often has an IP address that is assigned by the ISP when the machine dials in. That IP address is unique for that session -- it may be different the next time the machine dials in.

DOMAIN NAMES
Most people have trouble remembering the strings of numbers that make up IP addresses, and because IP addresses sometimes need to change, all servers on the Internet also have human-readable names, called domain names. For example, www.howstuffworks.com is a permanent,

human-readable name. It is easier for most of us to remember www.howstuffworks.com than it is to remember 209.116.69.66.

PORTS
Any server machine makes its services available

to the Internet using numbered ports, one for each service that is available on the server. For example, if a server machine is running a Web server and an FTP server, the Web server would typically be available on port 80, and the FTP server would be available on port 21. Clients connect to a service at a specific IP address and on a specific port.

HTTP PROTOCOL
The HTTP is used by web servers to communicate web pages to web browsers.

HTTP is used when your browser connects to a web server, requests a web page from the server, and downloads the page.

It is the common standard that enables any browser to connect to any server, anywhere in the world.

DETAILED PROCESS
Suppose we type this URL

http://www.howstuffworks.com/webserver.htm." The browser broke the URL into three parts: The protocol ("http") The server name ("www.howstuffworks.com") The file name ("web-server.htm")

 The browser communicates with a

name server to translate the server name "www.howstuffworks.com" into an IP Address, which it uses to connect to the server machine. The browser then forms a connection to the server at that IP address on port 80.

 Following the HTTP protocol, the browser

sents a GET request to the server, asking for the file http://www.howstuffworks.com/webserver.htm. The server then sents the HTML text for the Web page to the browser. The browser read the HTML tags and displays the page onto your screen.

LIST OF WEB SERVERS

Apache HTTP Server
This is the most popular web server in the world developed by the Apache Software Foundation. Apache web server is an open source software and can be installed on almost all operating systems including Linux, Unix, Windows, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and more. About 60% of the web server machines run the Apache Web Server.

 INTERNET

INFORMATION SERVER
The Internet Information Server (IIS) is a high performance Web Server from Microsoft. This web server runs on Windows NT/2000 and 2003 platforms. IIS comes bundled with Windows NT/2000 and 2003; Because IIS is tightly integrated with the operating system so it is relatively easy to administer it.

LIGHTTPD
The lighttpd, pronounced lighty is also a free web server that is distributed with the FreeBSD operating system. This open source web server is fast, secure and consumes much less CPU power. Lighttpd can also run on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris operating systems.

 SUN JAVA SYSTEM WEB

SERVER

This web server from Sun Microsystems is suited for medium and large web sites. Though the server is free it is not open source. It however, runs on Windows, Linux and Unix platforms. The Sun Java System web server supports various languages, scripts and technologies required for Web 2.0 such as JSP, Java Servlets, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails, ASP and Coldfusion etc.

JIGSAW SERVER
Jigsaw (W3C's Server) comes from the World Wide Web Consortium. It is open source and free and can run on various platforms like Linux, Unix, Windows, Mac OS X, Free BSD etc. Jigsaw has been written in Java and can run CGI scripts and PHP programs.

Product
Apache IIS nginx GWS

Vendor
Apache Microsoft

Web Sites Hosted

Percent

179,720,332 60.31% 57,644,692 19.34%

Igor Sysoev 22,806,060 7.65% Google 15,161,530 5.09%

lighttpd

lighttpd

1,796,471

0.60%

COMMON FEATURES
Virtual hosting
Large file support Bandwidth throttling

Server-side scripting

VIRTUAL HOSTING

It is for hosting multiple web sites using a

single IP address.

This allows one machine to share its resources such as Memory Processor cycle

Use its resources more efficiently.

LARGE FILE SUPPORT

Large file support to be able to serve files whose size is greater than 2 GB on 32 bit OS.

BANDWIDTH THROTTLING
It is to limit the speed of responses in order not to saturate the network.

Its to be able to serve more clients.

SERVER-SIDE SCRIPTING
Its running a script directly on the web server to generate dynamic web pages.

It is usually used to provide interactive web sites

THANK YOU