Web server
A web server is a server that runs computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients (web browsers), and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as HTML documents and linked objects.
Web server features
HTTP
Every web server program operates by accepting HTTP requests from the client, and provides an HTTP response to the client. The HTTP response usually consists of an HTML document, but can also be just a file, an image, or some other type of document. If some error is found in client request or while trying to serve it, a web server has to send an error response which may include some custom HTML or text messages to better explain the problem to end users.
Logging
Usually web servers have the capability of logging some detailed information, about client requests and server responses, to log files. It allows the webmaster to collect statistics by running log analyzers on these files.
Usually web servers have the capability of logging some detailed information, about client requests and server responses, to log files. It allows the webmaster to collect statistics by running log analyzers on these files.
Authentication
Optional authorization request (request of user name and password) before allowing access to some or all kind of resources.
Optional authorization request (request of user name and password) before allowing access to some or all kind of resources.
HTTPS
Https supports (by using SSL or TLS protocols) to allow secure (encrypted) connections to the server on the standard port 443 (instead of usual port 80).
Https supports (by using SSL or TLS protocols) to allow secure (encrypted) connections to the server on the standard port 443 (instead of usual port 80).
Web servers are able to map the path component of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) into:
- a local file system resource (for static requests),
- an internal or external program name (for dynamic requests).
Load limits
A web server (program) has defined load limits, because it can handle only a limited number of concurrent client connections (usually between 2 and 60,000, by default between 500 and 1,000) per IP address (and TCP port) and it can serve only a certain maximum number of requests per second depending on:
- its own settings,
- the HTTP request type,
- content origin (static or dynamic).
The most enhanced programs that provide web server service are:
- Apache HTTP Server.
- Internet Information Services.
- Sun Java System Web Server.
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