In this article, we learn about Web Server. We are going to learn What is Web Server, How it works and What popular Web Servers are there around us.
What is a Web Server?
How does a Web Server work?
Popular Web Server
What is a Web Server?
Before going to know about web servers, we first know about what is web pages, websites and browsers.
Basic Terminology
First, we start with web pages, web page is a single document that is linked to the World Wide Web. It is accessible to anyone who is connected to the internet and has a web browser. It contains many things like text, color, images, sounds, videos, documents etc.
The website is a collection of web pages. It can be published on at least one web server. It can be identified by a name which we called a domain name like google.com, youtube.com etc
A Web browser is software that is used to explore and display websites. A web browser is client-side software that is running on a client computer or mobile device. Some popular web browsers are Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox etc.
Web Server
A web server is a software and hardware that stores web content. In simple words, it stores websites, web pages, databases etc. This content could be images, texts, application data, videos, and many more as per the request of the client.
A website is a collection of web pages whereas a Web Server is a software that responds to the request for web browsers. Users ask for data through a web browser from the website, which happens when the user clicks on a particular link then web servers send that data which is asked by the user.
The Web Server can be shared, hosts or dedicated hosts. This means bigger companies hosts their websites on a dedicated server while small companies host their websites on a shared server.
How does a Web Server Work?
HTTP
Before starting to how web servers work we also know about HTTP. HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the foundation of the World Wide Web and is used to load webpages using hypertext links. HTTP involves a client machine requesting a server, which then sends a response message.
Web Server Working
The user processes a request via a web browser installed on a web server. The communication between a web server and the user takes place using Hypertext Transfer Protocol(HTTP). The primary role of a web server is to store process and deliver requested information or webpages to the users.
Some steps are easy to understand the working of a Web Server:
First, our Web browser obtains the IP address of the domain name like google.com. It can obtain in two ways -
By searching in its cache.
By requesting one or more Domain Name System(DNS) servers.
After knowing the IP address of the Domain Name browser now requests a full URL from the Web Server.
The Web Server responds to the browser by sending the pages desired by the user or client. If pages do not exist or some other error occurs, then it will send the error message related to the error occurring. For example, you have seen lots of time the error message Error 404 while you requesting the page which does not exist.
Finally, Browser gets the desired content from the Web Server which is wanted by the client or user. The browser displays the desired content of the client or sometimes error message when it is not found.
Popular Web Servers
Apache HTTP Server
Apache is the most popular web server which is mostly used. It is developed and maintained by Apache Software Foundation. Apache Server is popular because it is a free and open course.
It is available for a variety of OS like Windows, Mac OS, Unix, Linus, Solaris etc.
Microsoft Internet Information Service
Microsoft IIS is the second most popular used web server, and its market share is increasing quite rapidly with each passing day.
IIS server has all the features just like the Apache server but is not open source. It works with all the Windows operating system platforms.
Nginx
A popular open-source web server for administrators because of its light resource utilization and scalability.
Lighttpd
Lighttpd, also known as lighty, is a free, open-source web server with the FreeBSD operating system. It can also run on the commonly used operating system, unlike Windows, Mac OS, and Linus.
Sun Java System Web Server
Sun Java is a free web server developed by Sun Microsystems well equipped for medium and large websites that can run on Windows, Linux and Unix.