Chapter 8:

Web Server Hardware and Software

 Objectives
In this chapter, you will learn about:
• Web server basics
• Software for Web servers
• E-mail management and spam control issues
• Internet and Web site utility programs
• Web server hardware
2
 Web Server Basics
• The main job of a Web server is to respond to
requests from Web client computers
• There are 3 components of a Web server:
– Hardware
– Operating system software
– Web server software
3
 Types of Web Sites
• Development sites: Used to evaluate different Web designs
• Intranets: Corporate networks that house internal memos,
corporate policy handbooks, and a variety of other corporate
documents
• Extranets: Intranets that allow authorized parties outside the
company to access information stored in the system
• 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

4
 Web Clients and Web Servers
• Client/server architectures
– Client computers request services

– A server processes the clients’

requests

• Web software is platform

neutral, meaning that it lets
different types of servers
communicate with a variety of
clients

5
 Dynamic Content
• Dynamic content is 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

6
 Dynamic Content
• Server-side scripting (or includes)
– Programs running on a Web server create Web pages
before sending them back to the requesting Web clients
• Dynamic page-generation technologies: Server
side scripts are combined with html tags to create
dynamic content
– Active Server Pages (ASP)
– JavaServer Pages (JSP)
– PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP)

7
 Various Meanings of “Server”
• Server
– Computer used to provide files or make programs
available to other computers
• Server software: Used by a server to make files and programs
available to other computers
• Database server: Server on which database management
software runs

8
 Two-Tier Client/Server
Architecture
• Two-tier client/server architecture has one client
and one server

9
 Two-Tier Client/Server
Architecture
• Request message: Message that a Web client sends to request a
file or files from a Web server
– Typical request message contains:
• 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

10
 Three-Tier and N-Tier
Client/Server Architectures
• Three-tier architecture
– Extends two-tier architecture to allow additional processing (e.g.,
collection of data from a database) before reponses to requests are
made

• N-tier architectures
– Higher-order architectures
– Third tier includes software applications that interactively supply and
update information to and from the web server

11
12
 Web Server Software
• 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
14
 Apache HTTP Server
• Apache is the results of an ongoing group
software development effort, first developed
by Rob McCool at the University of Illinois in
1994 at the NCSA
• Apache has dominated the Web since 1996
because it is free (open source) and performs
efficiently
15
 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
16
 Electronic Mail (E-Mail)
• We all know the benefits of email
• Email drawbacks include:
– Time spent by business people responding to e-mail
– Computer viruses
• Programs that attach to other programs
• Can cause damage when the host program is activated
– Spam

18
 Spam
• Spam is unsolicited or commercial e-mail
• During one 24-hour period in 2005
researchers estimated that 106 billion spam
e-mail messages were sent

19
20
 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
– Requires software that identifies content elements that
indicate if a message is (or is not) spam

21
 Solutions to the Spam Problem
• 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

22
 Web Site and Internet Utility
Programs
• Finger
– Runs on UNIX operating systems
– Allows users to obtain information about other network
users
– Command yields a list of users who are logged on to a
network
• Ping (Packet Internet Groper)
– Tests connectivity between two computers connected to the
Internet
23
 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
– Calculates and displays the number of hops between
computers
– Calculates the time it takes to traverse an entire one-way
path between machines
24
25
 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
26
 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
27
 Data Analysis Software
• Web servers can capture:
– Data about who is visiting a Web site
– How long the visitor’s 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

28
 Link-Checking Utilities
• Link checker examines each Web page and reports on
URLs that:
– Are broken
– Seem broken
– Are incorrect in some way
• Orphan file
– File on a Web site not linked to any page
• Dead link
– When clicked, it displays an error message rather than a
Web page

29
 Remote Server Administration
• Web site administrator can control a Web site from
any Internet-connected computer

• NetMechanic

– Offers a variety of link-checking, HTML troubleshooting,

site-monitoring, and other programs

30
 Web Server Hardware
• Web server computers
– More memory, larger hard disk drives, and faster
processors than typical PCs
• 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

31
 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

32
 Web Server Hardware
Architectures
• Server farms
– Large collections of servers

• Centralized architecture
– Uses a few very large and fast computers

• Distributed/decentralized architecture
– Uses a large number of less powerful computers
– Divides the workload among them
33
 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

34
35
36
 Summary
• The Web uses a client/server architecture
• For simple HTTP requests a two-tier architecture
works well
• Operating systems commonly used on Web server
computers include:
– Microsoft server operating systems
– UNIX-based operating systems
37
 Summary
• Utility programs running on Web server
computers include:
– Finger, Ping, Tracert, e-mail server software, Telnet,
and FTP
• Unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam) has grown
dramatically in recent years
– Content filters are becoming available to deal with the
problem

38
 Summary
• Web server hardware
– Server computer must have enough memory and disk
space
• Factors that affect Web server performance
include:
– Operating system
– Connection speed
– User capacity
39