Chapter 8:

Web Server Hardware and Software

 Web Server Basics

The main job of a Web server computer is to respond

to requests from Web client computers
Three main elements of a Web server:
Hardware
Operating system software
Web server software
 Types of Web Sites

Development sites Transaction-processing sites

Used to evaluate Commerce sites that must be
different Web designs available 24 hours a day,
Intranets seven days a week
Corporate networks that Content-delivery sites
house internal memos,
Deliver content such as
corporate policy
news, histories, summaries,
handbooks, and a variety
and other digital information
of other corporate
documents
Extranets
Intranets that allow
authorized parties
outside the company to
access information stored
in the system
 Web Clients and Web Servers

Client/server architectures

Client computers typically request services

A server processes the clients requests

Web software

Lets different types of computers running different

operating systems communicate
Client Server Architecture and Software
 Dynamic Content
Dynamic content is nonstatic
information constructed in
response to a Web clients
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
Server-side scripting
Programs running on a Web
server create Web pages
before sending them back to
the requesting Web clients
Dynamic page-generation
technologies include:
Active Server Pages (ASP)
JavaServer Pages (JSP)
PHP: Hypertext
Preprocessor (PHP)
 Various Meanings of Server

Server
Computer used to provide files or make programs available to other
computers
Server software
Used by a server computer to make files and programs available to
other computers
Database server
Server computer on which database management software runs
 Server Architecture

Two-tier architecture
A web server responds to requests for web pages and a database server provides
backend data storage
Multi-tier architecture
A web server is linked to a middle-tier layer that typically includes a series of application
servers that perform specific tasks, as well as to a backend layer of existing
corporate systems
 Two-Tier Client/Server Architecture
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
contains:
Request line
Optional request headers
Optional entity body
Request line
Contains a command, the
name of the target resource,
and the protocol name and
version number
Request headers
Can contain information
about types of files that the
client will accept in response
to a request
Entity body
Used to pass bulk
information to the server
Three-Tier and N-Tier Client/Server Architectures
 Web Application Servers
Software programs that provide the specific business
functionality required of a web site. Include:
Catalog display
Transaction processing
Audio/video server
Auction server
B2B server

APACHE has 62% of the market of Web server software

Exercise: For more information, go to: www.apache.org
Right-sizing Your Hardware Platform: The Supply Side

Scalability: the ability of a site to increase in size as demand

warrants
Scale hardware vertically or horizontally
Improve processing architecture of the site
Vertically and Horizontally Scaling a System
 Software for Web Servers
Operating system tasks include
running programs and allocating
computer resources
Linux
Open-source operating
system that is easy to
install, fast, and efficient
Open-source software
Developed by a community of
programmers who make it
available for download at no
cost
Go to www.netcraft.com and check out some data and surveys
The most popular Web server
programs are:
Apache HTTP Server
Microsoft Internet
Information Server (IIS)
Sun Java System Web
Server (JSWS)
Netcraft
A networking consulting
company in Bath, England
Accumulates popularity
rankings
 Solutions to the Spam Problem
Reduce the likelihood that a
spammer can automatically
generate e-mail addresses
Control exposure of an e-mail
address
Use multiple e-mail addresses
Content filtering strategy
Require software that
identifies content elements
that indicate if a message is
(or is not) spam
Content-filtering techniques
Black list spam filter
Looks for known spammer
From addresses in incoming
messages
White list spam filter
Examines From addresses
and compares them to a list
of known good sender
addresses
Challenge-response technique
Compares all incoming
messages to a white list
 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 a server
Can often index documents stored in many different file
formats
 Data Analysis Software

Web servers can capture:

Data about who is visiting a Web site
How long the visitors Web browser viewed the site
Date and time of each visit
Which pages a visitor viewed
Data captured by Web servers are stored in a log file
 Web Server Performance Evaluation

Benchmarking
Testing used to compare the performance of hardware and
software
Throughput
Number of HTTP requests that a hardware and software
combination can process in a unit of time
Response time
Time required by a server to process one request
 Load-Balancing Systems
Load-balancing switch

Piece of network hardware that monitors the workloads of servers

attached to it

Assigns incoming Web traffic to a server that has the most

available capacity at that instant in time