Web Server Hardware and

Software
 Objectives
In this chapter, you will learn about:

• Web server basics

• Software for Web servers

• Internet utility programs

• Web server hardware

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 Web Server Basics
• Main job of a Web server computer
– To respond to requests from Web client
computers

• Three main elements of a Web server

– Hardware
– Operating system software
– Web server software

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 Types of Web Sites
• Development sites
– Used to evaluate different Web designs
• Intranets
– Corporate networks that house internal
memos, corporate policy handbooks
• Extranets
– Intranets that allow authorized parties outside
the company to access information stored in
the system

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 Types of Web Sites (Continued)
• Transaction-processing sites

– Commerce sites that must be available 24

hours a day, seven days a week

• Content-delivery sites

– Deliver content such as news, histories,

summaries, and other digital information

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 Web Clients and Web Servers
• Client/server architectures

– Client computers typically request services

– Server processes clients’ requests

• Web software

– Lets different types of computers, running

different operating systems, communicate

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 Platform Neutrality of the Web

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 Dynamic Content
• Nonstatic information constructed in response
to a Web client’s request

• Dynamic page

– Web page whose content is shaped by a

program in response to user requests

• Static page

– An unchanging page retrieved from disk

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 Dynamic Content (Continued)
• Server-side scripting
– Programs running on Web server create Web
pages before sending them back to the
requesting Web clients
• Dynamic page-generation technologies
– Active Server Pages (ASP)
– JavaServer Pages (JSP)
– PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP)

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 Various Meanings of “Server”
• Server
– Computer used to provide files or make programs
available to other computers
• Server software
– Used by server computer to make files and
programs available to other computers
• Database server
– Server computer on which database
management software runs

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 Two-Tier Client/Server Architecture
• Has only one client and one server
• Request message
– Message that a Web client sends to request a
file or files from a Web server
• Typical request message
– Request line
– Optional request headers
– Optional entity body

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 Message Flows in a Two-tier
Client/Server Network

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 Two-Tier Client/Server Architecture
(Continued)
• Request line
– Contains command, name of target resource,
and protocol name and version number
• Request headers
– Can contain information about types of files
that client will accept in response to request
• Entity body
– Used to pass bulk information to the server

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 Two-Tier Client/Server Architecture
(Continued)

• Three-tier architecture
– Extends two-tier architecture to allow
additional processing

• N-tier architectures
– Higher-order architectures
– Third tier includes software applications that
supply information to Web server

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 Message Flows in a Three-tier
Client/Server Network

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 Software for Web Servers
• Operating system tasks
– Running programs and allocating computer
resources
• Linux
– Open-source operating system that is easy to
install, fast, and efficient
• Open-source software
– Developed by community of programmers who
make it available for download at no cost

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 Web Server Software
• Most popular Web server programs
– Apache HTTP Server
– Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS)
– Sun Java System Web Server (JSWS)
• Netcraft
– A networking consulting company in Bath,
England
– Accumulated popularity rankings

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 Apache HTTP Server
• Ongoing group software development effort
• Dominated Web since 1996 because it is free
and performs efficiently
• Apache
– Developed by Rob McCool at University of
Illinois in1994 at the NCSA
– Currently available on the Web at no cost as
open-source software

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 Microsoft Internet Information Server
• Comes bundled with current versions of
Microsoft Windows Server operating systems
• Used on many corporate intranets
• Supports the use of
– ASP
– ActiveX Data Objects
– SQL database queries

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 Sun Java System Web Server
(Sun ONE, iPlanet, Netscape)

• Descendant of original NCSA Web server

program
• Formerly sold under the names
– Sun ONE
– Netscape Enterprise Serve
– iPlanet Enterprise Server
• Charges a $1500-per-CPU licensing fee

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 Web Site and Internet Utility Programs
• Finger
– Runs on UNIX operating systems
– Allows users to obtain information about other
network users
– Command yields list of users who are logged
on to network
• Ping (Packet Internet Groper)
– Tests connectivity between two computers
connected to the Internet

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 Tracert and Other Route-Tracing
Programs

• Tracert (TRACE RouTe)

– Sends data packets to every computer on the
path between one computer and another
– Clocks packets’ roundtrip times
– Calculate and display number of hops
between computers
– Calculate time it takes to traverse entire one-
way path between machines

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 Electronic Mail
• Useful feature
– Attachments
• Drawbacks
– Time spent by business people responding to
e-mail
– Computer virus
• Program that attaches itself to another program
• Can cause damage when host program is
activated

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 Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail
(UCE, Spam)
• Electronic junk mail that can include

– Solicitations, advertisements, or e-mail chain

letters

• Can consume large amounts of Internet

capacity

• Companies

– Now offer software to limit amount of spam

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 Telnet and FTP Utilities
• Telnet
– Program that allows users to log on to a
computer connected to the Internet
• Telnet protocol
– Set of rules used by Telnet programs
• File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
– Defines formats used to transfer files between
TCP/IP-connected computers

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Indexing and Searching Utility Programs
• Search engines or search tools
– Search either a specific site or the entire Web
for requested documents
• Indexing program
– Can provide full-text indexing that generates
an index for all documents stored on server
– Can often index documents stored in many
different file formats

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 Data Analysis Software
• Web servers can capture
– Data about who is visiting a Web site
– How long the visitor’s Web browser viewed
site
– Date and time of each visit
– Which pages visitor viewed
• Data captured by Web servers
– Stored in a log file

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 Remote Server Administration

• Web site administrator can control Web site

from any Internet-connected computer

• NetMechanic

– Offers variety of link-checking, HTML

troubleshooting, site-monitoring, and other
programs

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 Web Server Hardware
• Web server computers
– More memory, larger hard disk drives, and faster
processors
• Blade servers
– Placing small server computers on a single
computer board, then installing boards into a
rack-mounted frame
• Virtual server (virtual host)
– Maintains more than one server on one machine

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 Web Server Performance Evaluation
• Benchmarking
– Testing used to compare the performance of
hardware and software
• Throughput
– Number of HTTP requests that hardware and
software combination can process in a unit of
time
• Response time
– Time required by server to process one
request

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 Web Server Hardware Architectures
• Server farms
– Large collections of servers
• Centralized architecture
– Uses a few very large and fast computers
• Distributed/decentralized architecture
– Uses large number of less powerful computers
– Divides the workload among them

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 Load-Balancing Systems

• Load-balancing switch

– Piece of network hardware that monitors the

workloads of servers attached to it

– Assigns incoming Web traffic to server that

has the most available capacity at that instant
in time

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 A Load-Balancing System in a
Decentralized Architecture

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 Summary
• Web uses
– Client/server architecture
• For simple HTTP requests
– Two-tier architecture works well
• Operating systems commonly used on Web
server computers
– Microsoft server operating systems
– UNIX-based operating systems

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 Summary
• Utility programs running on Web server
computers
– Finger, Ping, Tracert, email server software,
Telnet, and FTP
• Web server hardware
– Server computer must have enough memory and
disk space
• Factors that affect Web server performance
– Operating system
– Connection speed
– User capacity

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