Have you ever wondered where all the contents of your digital marketing strategy that you upload to your website are located?
It is, then, on web servers. These are essential for the Internet and if they did not exist, surfing the web would be very different from what we know today.
With the digital transformation and the increasing use of the Internet it was more than necessary to create servers that were capable of storing and issuing the (almost infinite) information library that we found on the web.
Imagine web servers as a "normal" office computer, unless in this case they are ready to be turned on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year .
Do you still have doubts? Do not worry, in this article we will answer what you need to know about web servers, keep reading!
What is a server?
A server (server) is a computer of great power
that is responsible for "providing the service" to transmit the
information requested by its customers server qualifications (other computers, mobile devices,
printers, people, etc.)
Web servers (web server) are a component of
servers whose main function is to store, in web hosting , all the files of a web page
(images, texts, videos, etc.) and transmit them to users through browsers using
the HTTP protocol (Hipertext Transfer Protocol).
What is
a server on the Internet for?
The main role of a web server is to store
and transmit the requested content of a website to the user's browser .
This process, for Internet users, lasts no
more than a second, however, at the web server level it is a more complicated
sequence than it seems.
To fulfill its functions, the server must have
the ability to always be on to avoid interrupting the service offered to its
customers. If this server fails or shuts down, Internet users will have
problems entering the website.
How
does a server work?
Communication between a server and its clients
is based on HTTP, that is, the hypertext transfer protocol or its HTTPS encoded
variant.
To know how it works, it is first necessary to
know that the web server is permanently waiting for a request for
information .
Also, keep in mind that every computer,
smartphone or tablet has a unique and unrepeatable IP address that identifies
it from another device on the network, this is how the web server sends the
exact information that the Internet user is waiting for.
However, in order for the web server to
fulfill its function, it is necessary to receive the request from a browser, in
other words, an order is sent from an IP address to the IP address of the
server that hosts the site's files in question.
Next, the web server searches its files for
the information that is being requested, proceeds to interpret the lines of
code and send the result to the browser whose IP address was the requestor.
This result is shown to Internet users and is
what always happens when browsing Internet sites. When this process is
complete we can say that the web server has fulfilled its function.
What
are the characteristics of a server?
As necessary features of a web server at
the software and hardware level ,
we can find:
Software
level
OS
It ensures that the hardware works and manages
to interact with the services that the system runs. Some examples are:
- Unix,
- Linux,
- or
Windows
File
systems
It is a logical guide that allows the system
to locate, sort and filter data on the hard drive, so that we can read, modify
or delete them.
HTTP
server software
They are the different types of web servers
specialized in transmitting the content via web (Apache, Nginx, IIS, Caddy,
etc.).
Virtual
hosting
It allows that under the same web server and
IP they stay in several different websites.
Dispatch
of static and dynamic files
Static files provide support for hosting and
dispatching files such as:
- JPG,
- GIF,
- PNG,
- BMP,
- CSS ,
- TXT,
- HTML,
- Javascript,
- MP3
- and
MP4.
Dynamic files work for information in PHP,
ASP, Python, Ruby and GO.
Network
and Limit Monitoring
It allows monitoring network traffic, packets
that come and go, as well as system services and hardware use such as:
- the
use of Storage;
- RAM
consumption;
- CPU
occupancy rate;
- network
speed;
- write
/ read performance on disk.
Security
system
The security system of a server must:
- impose
access limits per IP address;
- deny
or allow access to certain files or URLs;
- request
username and password for basic HTTP authentication;
- filtering
insecure requests;
- Support
to dispatch encrypted information with SSL security certificates via HTTPS.
Hardware
level
Rack
and cabinet
The rack refers to the place where the servers
are physically housed and the cabinet is the frame that holds the hardware
components of a computer.
CPU
It is the server's data processing center from
which all the logical and mathematical calculations are performed so that the
user can manipulate and access the data as needed.
RAM
It is used to store information and data
temporarily depending on the user's demand through the operating system.
Storage
units
The storage of web servers is done on hard
drives, which allow you to store the information of the operating system,
system services, and ultimately the data loaded by the user.
Network
port
The bandwidth is what allows you to have
enough volume to transmit information back and forth to and from your web
server.
What
types of servers exist?
There are many types of web servers, know
which are the most used web servers today:
Apache
It is the most common and used in the world,
however, it has lost popularity against Microsoft IIS and Nginx.
Among the advantages of Apache is
that it is an open source, with free and cross-platform software ,
and among its disadvantages its low performance when it receives thousands of
simultaneous requests (requests) in dynamic content processing or static files.
Known and popularized as one of the best
Apache alternatives . Nginx is a free and
open source web server (although there is also a commercial version) that
stands out for its high performance.
Among its benefits, a simple, light, fast and
excellent configuration in terms of safety and performance stands out, it also
allows it to be configured to integrate natively with almost any modern
technology and programming language.
As disadvantages we can find that it does not
support .htaccess (Apache) files, although it includes its own rewriting
language.
LiteSpeed
It is an HTTP dispatch software developed by
LiteSpeedTech, there is an open source version and a commercial version that
includes different types of licenses.
Some of the benefits of LiteSpeed is
that it provides large amounts of simultaneous connections with
a really low resource consumption (even with demanding applications such as
those that use PHP) and at the level of static files it lives up to Nginx.
Microsoft
IIS
Internet Information Services or IIS has
become popular to offer cloud services , mainly in Azure
(Microsoft's Cloud Hosting platform).
In addition, its perfect integration with
Windows (of course), Visual Studio and its tools made this web server position
itself as the leading server in the business world.
Other
known web servers
- Lighttpd ;
- Caddy ;
- Cherokee ;
- NodeJS ;
- Sun Java System Web Server ;
- Google
Web Server (GWS), is Google's private server so it cannot be downloaded.
Each web server is
indicated for certain functions, so choosing which one you are going to use
will depend on what you intend to do with them.
In
conclusion
Do not forget that when considering choosing a
web server you should consider:
- how
well it works with the operating system and other servers;
- its
ability to handle server programming;
- security
features;
- the
particular tools of publication;
- search engine ;
- the
creation of sites that come with it.
Web servers not only allow you to publish your
site on the Internet, but also deliver the content to your
readers. Knowing which one suits you and your readers is essential for the
web server you choose to properly fulfill its functions.
Did you like the article and want to continue
learning? So, be sure to read our blog about the types of programming language . It
will be very useful!
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