what is apache server

What is apache server?

Apache HTTP Server (referred to as Apache) is an open source web server software from the Apache Software Foundation. Can run on most computer operating systems. Due to its cross-platform and security, it is widely used and is one of the most popular web server software. It is fast, reliable and can be extended through a simple API to compile interpreters such as Perl/Python into the server.

Apache was originally developed by the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since then, Apache HTTPD has been continuously developed and enhanced by members of the open source community.

Apache Http website server has a reputation of being reliable and reliable, and has been used in more than half of the world's websites - especially almost all of the most popular and visited websites. For example, the Wikipedia website server uses Apache.

When it first started developing, Apache was just one of the open source options besides Netscape web server (now Sun ONE). Slowly, it began to surpass other Unix-based HTTP servers in functionality and speed. In the era of Apache 2.x, the actual efficiency is faster than that of Apache 1.x. 2.x can serve more web page connections at the same time than 1.x.

Since April 1996, Apache has been the most popular HTTP server on the Internet: in May 1999 it was running on 57% of web servers, and by July 2005 this proportion had risen to 69%.

At its peak in November 2005, it reached nearly 70% of the market share. However, after some host domain name providers with large number of domain names converted to the Microsoft IIS platform, Apache's market share has declined slightly in recent years. .

At the same time, after the search engine giant Google’s own web server platform GWS was launched (it can also be said to be a modified version of Apache[3]), coupled with lightweight web server software such as nginx and Lighttpd, it has also entered the market There is some visibility, and these factors are reflected in the increase and decrease in the overall web server market share, and Apache's market share has fallen accordingly.

According to Netcraft's latest statistics in December 2009, Apache's market share has dropped to 53.67%, IIS to 18.26%, Google web server 13.53%, and nginx 8.75%. Despite this, Apache and its various branch versions are still the web server software with the highest market share in the current Internet market

For more Apache-related knowledge, please visit the Apache Usage Tutorial column!

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