Best web server of the millenium ?????

Overall, Apache is the king of web servers. This is a misleading piece of information however, as apache is not frequently scaling up to the very large and e-biz oriented web sites. But, to answer your first question, Apache dominates the web server market. You can see discussions on market dominance and overall coverage of web servers in the market at:

http://www.serverwatch.com/

The most popular webserver for large and scalable sites continues to be the Netscape Enterprise Suite (now called iPlanet web server). You can read about NES at the link above for a good collection of reviews and information about the product.

IIS is a strong contender in the middle-range web server market, but the big sites generally want large platform-deployment options, whereas IIS is obviously a Microsoft-specific product.

The NetCraft Survey shows the presence of web servers by brand based on random web samples. You can check out the results at:
http://serverwatch.internet.com/netcraft/199912netcraft.html

Given that large enterprise-ish sites aren't nearly as high-frequency, Netscape shows up third.

Apache takes a huge lead as many of the entry-level web hosting sites choose Apache on FreeBSD or Linux. This includes hosting sites like CIHost and such that may carry 40,000+ virtual hosts under their ownership.

Steve

You might also want to look at the IBM bundle of their http server and websphere - it seems like an excellent buy that is carrying more weight in the market. It's early to tell, but you can read about websphere at http://www.ibm.com/websphere.

Steve

Hi s_franklin,


    Sorry for rejecting the answer. I want a long discussion on this issue.

Do you know the answer of second question???

Thank u

Yaa. My Question is wrong.

It is e-500 companies
 not
Fortune 500 companies.

As a point of interest, you may want to have a look at the structure behind Microsoft's site. http://www.microsoft.com/backstage/solutions.htm

Also, you can see the diagram of their 'One IP solution':
http://www.microsoft.com/backstage/column_t2_1.htm

I believe most companies that I know of our duking it out btw. NES/IPLANET or IIS.  I personally believe NES is a better server but again it depends on what your target is.

The decision of what your Web Server is going to be should depend on your Server Platform, your development languages (ASP vs Perl vs Cold Fusion vs PHP) and the search indexing, APIs you want supported. Alot of your App Servers or server side scripting are better supported on NT than Unix.

Most traffic intensive sites are usually looking at NES on a good Sun server.

Some Companies are starting to move to Linux Servers.

Applitiaon Servers like BEA, WebSphere, Cold Fusion, etc are getting more and more popular to handle your load balancing and clustering.

CJ

 My requirement to run Java Servlets

Well, for Java Servlets I would recommend a Sun Server with NES or Apache both can be configured to Run Java Servlets... I still don't like the performance of Java on Windows to recommend a WindowsNT based server.

CJ

ravindra76,
   I think posting a question, and expect the discussion to prolong is kinda misleading. A nice trick.  Anyway, back to the discussion;

1. Best web server:  Hmm...best in what sense.  Best price, performance, support, or what? please clarify.

So far I'm quite happy to rate Apache as to be almost the best (hate to say THE best).  As vast amount of web server on the net are Apaches or even Apache derivetives.  Ever heard that IBM Websphere (hope the spelling is OK), are somehow derived from apache.  And ever heard that some vendors, Nortel Networks, Cisco are deploying Apache as the platform for their WEB based management tools (Optivity 9, CiscoWorks 2000).  Maybe the price factor drive those so called BIG guy to choose apache.  Heck, maybe we could give their CEO a phone call and ask :)

2. What is the F500 companies deploy.
  I would say that those over-priced (software+support) Web servers must be the choice.  The reasons?  Maybe the support.  As everybody aware, most companies nowadays (maybe) tend to like products where should there is any problem, they know that there is somebody to call (and screw them up) for help.  In addition, they are kinda comfortable with the idea that those software that at offered by BIG players are tend to be more stable. :(  Believe me, it's worst than anybody can think.  Those software looks attractive when they are bundled together with other application, such as Calendaring, Workflow apps, Email apps. e.t.c, but as a standalone web server, they are no better than any other "freeware" web server.  And i would say, they tend to be the last to follow the standard.
 
Do I get 100 points of what?  Just kidding.

Let the discussion begins...

Samri

samri:
  Actually that is the way EE works..
we discuss and then the question asker can pick one of the comments that he sees fit that best answered the question.  If people keep posting answers then it locks the question down and other experts don't participate as much.

CJ

Apache simply hasn't taken the top spot for the big sites. They are going NES/iPlanet for the scalability and fault-tolerance. Apache is a good web server, but for load balancing, tens-of-thousands of concurrent connections, swapover, etc - it can't yet compete. It isn't just about support - NES has a huge amount of functionality for bullet-proof scalability and robustness.

Also, don't get servlet compatibility confused with the webserver. You need to look at application servers to figure out what kind of support is best for you. You can enhance Apache with JServ (http://java.apache.org), but you can also look at better tools like WebSphere (it is completely separate from Apache and a java-based system - not based on it) or weblogic (http://www.weblogic.com).

Steve

cheek - probably the wrong forum but I disagree. Accurate and targeted answers are much more efficient - USENET and chat forums are for discussions in my opinion. Searching the experts repository is generally made more difficult with long and distracted discussions and it also clutters the inbox of people who are already quite busy. This discussion can move to one of the EE areas as I'm already doing what I protest - rambling off-topic :)

Steve

NES is better, definitely, but when it comes to load balancing to scale up you usually should invest in an application server such as IBM's Websphere or Bea's WebLogic.

Here is a list of Servers and tools for Java servlets:
http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/industry.html

and for JSP:
http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/industry.html

I have not heard of any performance problems for Apache.  I don't think that Apache has any scalability issues or anything of that sort and as I stated before.. companies use application servers to handle load balancing and clustering, etc.

CJ

But: [again off topic :-)]

Discussions are better for solving problems, issues... like this one..
some do go wayword but those are only a handful.  I never let anyone lock down my questionb because if you are an expert you never really browse through the locked questions. So for maximum input and participation it is better to just post comments and let the most experts take part.

Sorry about the wayword discussion.

I will end it here.  I actually will post a question in the lounge and see what people have to say.

CJ

There is no real answer to your question.  Each of the most popular servers all have advantages and disadvantages.  In addition selection is influenced by architecture, UNIX vs NT considerations, transaction volumes, base applications, how much money you have, and so on.  Some are very popular numerically speaking (ie Apache on Linux "servers" or PCs as I prefer to call them), but thats because they are cheap and used for amateur and non-business purposes.  Some are better for 3 layer architectures interfacing with large volume tranaction processors at the back end (like IBM's Websphere or Bea's WebLogic), but they can be expensive because of the up time requirements.  Choice of application development language or decent support for EJB in another influence.  Sorry, there's no easy answer as you just can't pick the "best" package just like tha.  Can you post more details of what you are trying to achieve, volumes, and any other basic requirements.

Cheek - when you're handling 10,000 concurrent connections, apache just doesn't compete. Also, when an web server goes down, the transparent fail-over of NES is much easier to design for and integrate into your web system. You're right that clustering of your app server is important, but even with a web server that doesn't do a heck of a lot, they do get a bit bogged down under heavy loads.

By the way, BEA's weblogic comes with a webserver if your system isn't going to start out as a huge system. Both weblogic and websphere integrate with NES. I have been more impressed with weblogic and websphere based on my investigations to date.

Steve

My company (Fortune 20) picked IBM's WebSphere (usings it built in modified Apache Server) for an enterprise solution package.  I seemed to be one of the most complete packages. They had the more features and support for the latest technologies (EJB, JSP, Servlets, etc).

It was a winner over BEA only because it came with a completely integrated solution for development and deployment(better than BEA)

Of course this is the App Server but both BEA and Websphere come with WebServers or integrate with all the popular servers (NES,IIS,Apache)

CJ

BTW: Netscape/Sun Alliance is releasing IPlanet Web Server ver. 6.0

Just FYI.

CJ