By:- Shitish Ahluwalia

Setting Up a Web Server

Setting up a Web server doesnt require a lot of money. One can build a small Web server with an inexpensive PC (costing about $1,500) running on Windows 98 or NT. But it is a good idea to start with a server-type computer offered by several leading PC manufacturers. Benchmarking Web Server Hardware and Software Benchmarking Web server hardware and software combination can help make informed decisions for a merchant. Benchmarking is testing used to compare performance of hardware and software. The results of benchmark tests demonstrate that there are measurable differences in server performance that a web site manager must consider before purchasing or leasing a web server.

 There are companies who offer performance

comparison on leading server-type computers and Web servers. There are also several benchmarking programs available in the market that can be used by a merchant to test an e-commerce site.

Web Stone is a popular benchmarking software that measures performance on various types of Web pages such as:
HTML: This is the standard static Web page containing only HTML tags. CGI: Common Gateway Interface or CGI protocol causes the Web server

to run another program and return the result to the Web server. For example, clicking on a link with URL: http://www.stocknews.com/cgibin/stock.exe?ticker=MSFT, causes to run stock.exe program in the site mentioned and run a database query for ticker=MSFT. API: Application Programming Interface or API is a set of protocols that uses multithreading to handle user requests of the dynamic Web pages. API is more efficient than CGI, as CGI requires an individual program to be brought to the Web server memory when requested by multiple users.

 All Web server software provide some basic features

which can be classified as:

Core capabilities

Site management

Application development

Electronic commerce

Core Capabilities
The most fundamental duty of a Web server is to process and respond to

Web client requests that are sent using HTTP protocol. For a static page, the server locates the page and returns it as a formatted HTML document to the client computer. For a dynamic page, the server invokes other programs or database, formats the HTML page, and returns it to the client.
IP-Sharing or Virtual Server:

A virtual server or virtual host is a feature that maintains more than one server on one machine.
a physical file. . For example, the physical file c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\default.htm may be configured as logical URL: www.Mybusiness.com/home.htm.

Logical File: A Web server can have a logical file name corresponding to

 Security:Security and authentication services are set for extranet users,

in which case the users are accessing Web files from the public Internet. The files and folders are configured for validation of username and password. Access controls provide or deny access to files based on the username or by URL.
FTP: Web servers provide File Transfer Protocol (FTP) services. Thus

users can transfer files to and from the server.

Searching: Search engines and indexing programs are standard

components of the Web server. Search engines or search tools search either the existing site or the entire Web for requested documents.

 Site Analysis: Web servers can capture visitor

information, including who is visiting the Web site (the visitors URL), how long the visitor browsed the site, the date and time of each visit, and the pages visited.

Site Management
A Web server provides tools to manage the

services such as management of multiple Web sites, file security, virtual file, and log file analysis. Administration of a Web server can be performed from a remote computer in the network. Site management also include authoring tools such as Microsoft Front page 2000, as well as script checking, HTML validation, and identification of orphan pages, broken links, error-prone pages etc.

Application Development
Software development is the development of

a software product. Nowadays, the most complex applications focus on elements such as speed, compatibility, security, scalability and customer experience..

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce

or e-comm, refers to the buying and

selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks.

 E-tailing or "virtual storefronts" on Web sites with online

catalogs, sometimes gathered into a "virtual mall.(eBay.in and snapdeal.com)

 gathering and use of demographic data through

Web contacts Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), the business-tobusiness exchange of data E-mail and fax and their use as media for reaching prospects and established customers (for example, with newsletters) Business-to-business buying and selling

Web Server Software and Tools

There are many Web server software available in the

market, but only a few of them are leading in the total market share. Some of them run on only one operating system while others run on several operating systems.

The Three Most Popular Web Servers Are:-

Apache HTTP server

The Apache server has been developed by an open source community

- Apache Software Foundation

Apache runs on a wide variety of operating system such as Microsoft

NT, and Linux.

Apache can be managed by using

Web browser.

Microsoft Internet Information Server

Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS)

is the second most popular Web server in the public domain and it is the most popular Web server in the intranet domain.
IIS is a group of Internet servers (including a Web or Hypertext

Transfer Protocol server and file transfer protocol server) with additional capabilities for Microsoft's Windows NT and Windows 2000 Server operating systems.
IIS runs only on the Windows NT operating system. A typical company that buys IIS can create pages for Web sites using

Microsoft's Front Page product

 Netscape Enterprise Server (NES) is popular

Web software developed originally by

It is aimed at sites that service a large number of

hits (as high as 100 million per day).

Thank You !