The Top Web Servers in the Market

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This article gives you an idea of what a Web server is and what it does, and discusses the top Web servers in the market. What makes a "top" Web server? The key aspects include scalability, speed, security, availability and support for dynamic modules.

What is a Web Server?

Your business runs around the clock and around the world. Your employees and your clients need access to information stored your company’s computers. With Web server software you can set up a secure and dedicated server that provides access to anyone who needs that information at their finger tips. 

The two simple words “Web server” express a lot of concepts. Here are some of them:
  

• A computer (physical) that maintains software (logical) to store Web documents and makes them available to the rest of the world.
  
  
• A software application that uses the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). A Web server is usually run on a computer that is connected to the Internet.
  
  
• Something that hosts or provides access to content and responds to requests received from Web browsers. Every Web Server has an IP address and usually a domain name (for example, www.devshed.com).
  
   
• An application that serves Web pages to Web browsers using the HTTP protocol.
  
   
• Server software that uses HTTP to serve up HTML documents and any associated files and scripts when requested by a client, such as a Web browser. Web servers are used on Web and intranet sites.  

I hope the above has gone some way toward explaining what a Web server is and what it does. 
 

In simple words, a Web server receives requests from several clients (web browsers or other applications) around the world and responds  with information in the form of a Web page. If a Web server needs to do something to process the request, such as access a database, this is known as server side processing. If no processing takes place at the Web server, then it will directly render the item -- as with HTML in the form of Web pages, or Web downloads such as .zip files.
  

Some times, Web server software will be configured in a dedicated manner on a single piece of hardware to serve requests. This specific computer, then, would be called a Web server (from the view of network design considerations). These types of Web servers may also be part of a cluster to provide high availability and speed.
 

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