Overview on Most Commonly Used Web Server

Overview on Most Commonly Used Web Server

While talking about web servers firstly it should be known; what it a web server? We can refer to a web server as it is the software or the hardware developed to provide web content for use via internet. The main purpose of a web server is to provide hosting service to the web sites and in addition some more facilities like data storage. They are also used in running some enterprise application software too.

The enterprise software is used for executing different business related functions such as accounting, production & procurement activities, scheduling tasks, management of business and client data etc. The web server provides web pages after getting the client requests for it. Clients can be a browser or a crawler that sends requests for any content via http. Then the web server works and give response according to the request and can give an error message in case of unavailability of the required content.

Most of the Web hosting or IT support services providers contain these features of giving web hosting services to their clients.

These providers use different web servers to offer the web hosting services. The Apache Web Server is being used mostly by different companies. According to a recent survey it has got more that 55 percent of the market shares in terms of usage as more than 50 % of the websites are based on Apache Web Server. Apache is an HTTP Server based on open source web server platform confirming the availability of most of the websites. It supports the web operating systems like Windows, UNIX, Linux, MAC OS X, Solaris etc. Apache is designed by the Apache Software Foundation; it is an open source community that updates it on specific time intervals to make it more secure.

Apache is being used on the internet by different users popularly since 1996.

There are many versions of this web server as Apache 1.3, Apache 2.0 and Apache 2.2. It is designed mainly to increase the network throughput that confirms to process the requests within the given time interval. Apache can be run in hybrid mode also to support the IT infrastructure requirement. This can be done because it provides Multi-Processing modules (MPM) and it is good to select a correct MPM.

Apache has completed 15 successful years of its inception and has powered approximately more than 100 million sites worldwide. The amount of the data it is providing goes to petabytes across the world and any person can use Apache by simply downloading and installing without paying any cost of purchase.