HTTP: The Definitive Guide

Web Servers Come in All Shapes and Sizes

A web server processes HTTP requests and serves responses. The term “web server” can refer either to web server software or to the particular device or computer dedicated to serving the web pages.

Web servers comes in all flavors, shapes, and sizes. There are trivial 10-line Perl script web servers, 50-MB secure commerce engines, and tiny servers-on-a-card. But whatever the functional differences, all web servers receive HTTP requests for resources and serve content back to the clients (look back to Figure 1-5).

Web Server Implementations

Web servers implement HTTP and the related TCP connection handling. They also manage the resources served by the web server and provide administrative features to configure, control, and enhance the web server.

The web server logic implements the HTTP protocol, manages web resources, and provides web server administrative capabilities. The web server logic shares responsibilities for managing TCP connections with the operating system. The underlying operating system manages the hardware details of the underlying computer system and provides TCP/IP network support, filesystems to hold web resources, and process management to control current computing activities.

Web servers are available in many forms:

• You can install and run general-purpose software web servers on standard computer systems.

• If you don’t want the hassle of installing software, you can purchase a web server appliance, in which the software ...