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hß · NetworksCurated

Apache 1.2: more than 300,000 servers

Summary

According to Netcraft, more than 43 percent of almost 1.27 million recorded websites ran Apache in August 1997. More than 300,000 of the over 500,000 Apache servers had already switched to the current version 1.2. Microsoft came to 17.69 and Netscape to 11.76 percent, and the CERN server had disappeared from the statistics.

Ideas

  • A free web server dominated the market ahead of commercial offerings.
  • The rapid adoption of a new version shows an active community of operators.
  • Netcraft determined the server software by automatically querying the websites.
  • Older servers such as CERN httpd disappeared, and NCSA was about to follow.

Insights

  • Open software wins infrastructure markets when it offers operators control and adaptability.
  • High update rates are a quality feature of a project, not just of its users.

Facts

  • In early August 1997 Netcraft surveyed a total of 1,269,800 websites, compared with 252,685 in July 1996.
  • 548,990 sites used Apache.
  • The NCSA server stood at 5.3 percent, O’Reilly’s WebSite at 3.28 percent.

References

Critique

  • Netcraft counts host names, not machines or visitors; many sites on one server distort the shares.

Recommendations

  • Always read market share statistics together with their counting method.
  • Keep web servers on current versions promptly, as the Apache operators already demonstrated in 1997.

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