Web server

A web server is a set of programs and hardware that processes requests from client devices and sends web pages and other content in response. You are reading this article because the web server that hosts this site delivered a page in response to a request from your device.

How a web server works

A Web server runs on a computer or specialized hardware and includes the following components:

Hardware. The computer or server hardware that the web server runs on. It provides the resources (CPU, memory, and disk space) to process requests.

Software part. The software that processes requests and sends responses. It may include a web server, web services, database services, and other components that provide functionality and query processing.

Web server software. Software that runs a web server, such as Apache HTTP Server, Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), nginx, and others. These programs listen on network ports, process client requests, and send appropriate responses.

Popular web servers

Apache — is one of the most popular web servers in the world for Linux from 1996 until now. This web server is flexible and can handle a large number of requests. Apache includes many modules that can be installed to improve performance, security, request statistics, and more. Apache is free software and is distributed free of charge.

nginx — is a fast and lightweight free web server for Linux developed by Russian programmers. Often nginx works in conjunction with Apache as a proxy. It can take on the roles of reverse proxy and load balancer.

LiteSpeed Web Server — is a high performance web server often used for hosting high traffic websites. LiteSpeed is paid, but has a free version called Open LiteSpeed.

Microsoft IIS —  is a web server developed by Microsoft. It is popular with users of Windows operating systems and can be integrated with other Microsoft products.