Web server

The term web server can mean one of two things:

1. a computer responsible for serving web pages, mostly HTML documents, via the HTTP protocol to clients, mostly web browsers;
2. a software program that is working as a daemon serving web documents.

The most common HTTP servers are:

• Apache HTTP Server from the Apache Software Foundation
• Internet Information Server (IIS) from Microsoft
• Caudium (formerly Roxen)
• AOLserver from America Online
• thttpd from ACME Laboratories
• Zeus Web Server from Zeus Technology
• Sun ONE from Sun Microsystems (formerly Netscape's iPlanet nee Enterprise)
• iPlanet from Netscape Communications Corporation
• WebSTAR from 4D, Inc.
• Stronghold from Red Hat
• NCSA HTTPd
• Microsoft Windows PWS

The most commonly-used web server, Apache, with over 60% of market share as of March 2003, is available from the Apache Software Foundation.

You can find the current web servers statistics from the Netcraft Web Server Survey.