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The December 2001 Netcraft Web Server Survey is out: http://www.netcraft.com/survey/ Top Developers Developer November 2001 Percent December 2001 Percent Change Apache 20713781 56.81 20497607 56.50 -0.31 Microsoft 10844419 29.74 11156732 30.75 1.01 iPlanet 1310502 3.59 1302788 3.59 0.00 Zeus 800661 2.20 792530 2.18 -0.02 Active Sites Developer November 2001 Percent December 2001 Percent Change Apache 7750275 61.88 8588323 63.34 1.46 Microsoft 3307207 26.40 3609428 26.62 0.22 iPlanet 431935 3.45 383078 2.83 -0.62 Zeus 174052 1.39 172352 1.27 -0.12 Absolute number of sites found falls This month sees a drop in the number of sites found by the survey, for only the second time since the survey started in [1]August 1995. The previous drop was in [2]August this year, caused by failures and business model changes at several mass hosting companies, and the aftermath of the Code Red virus. That drop turned out to be a blip with the previous trendlines re-establishing themselves the following month. This time the primary reason is a drop in the number of registered domain names, as the number of domains not renewed exceeds new registrations. Domains bought during the rampant domain-name speculation of late 1999 are now coming up for two-year renewal, and many are being abandoned. For example over the last three months the number of .com domains has dropped by about 130k, though earlier quarters this year still saw increases. Domain-name speculation accelerated during 2000, so it will be interesting to see how the number of sites changes during 2002. The introduction of the [3]new domains like .biz, and increasing internet development in parts of the world, will counter the abandonment of existing domains. The drop has had particularly evident impact this month at the popular registrar [4]register.com, which has seen the number of registered but unused sites parked at [5]futuresite.register.com drop by 300k, accounting for the drop in Apache numbers this month. Note that this does not necessarily demonstrate that register.com's business is harder hit than other registrars, though as register.com was one of the earliest popular alternative registrars it would perhaps see large numbers of non-renewals earlier than some other registrars. Even if many domains are not renewed, this does not mean registrars are in trouble; many domains will be renewed providing an increase in business compared to earlier this year, just not at the amazing levels of two years previously. Of course there is not a direct linkage between the number of registered domains and the number of sites in the Netcraft survey. On the one hand domains may not have any websites, and on the other hand sub-domains permit multiple sites per domain, such as our [6]www.netcraft.com and [7]uptime.netcraft.com sites. As domains bought for speculative reasons are abandoned, we can expect a higher proportion of sites to be [8]active. Not all hosters retrenching It's not all doom and gloom for web hosters. [9]Dialtone Internet is expanding into Europe, [10]opening a new data center here in the United Kingdom this month, following in the steps of [11]Rackspace which [12]opened a European data center in the United Kingdom last year. We have noticed a trend of people moving sites from the US to their own countries as dedicated server facilities pick up around the world, and hosting in the US is no longer significantly cheaper for many countries as bandwidth costs drop. Review of 2001 The year has seen dramatic changes, with the meltdown of some internet infrastructure companies and the slide in technology stock prices. In the survey we have seen a very significant slowing in the growth of the number of sites compared to the boom times of 2000. Reduction in web advertising demand and rates has caused difficulties at a number of free mass hosters, targeting residential and small business users, such as [13]Webjump, [14]Namezero and [15]Homestead. This and the [16]Code Red virus and [17]Nimda worm has caused the monthly growth in numbers to be somewhat erratic in the second half of the year. Mainly through gains at some of the remaining mass hosters such as [18]Namezero and [19]Network Solutions, IIS has seen its share increase in the full survey during the second half of the year. However for active sites IIS and Apache share has changed little during the year. The most significant [20]web business failure of the year was Exodus, weighed down by a huge debt burden of $3.2 billion and running out of cash (though ISP [21]PSInet's bankruptcy with $2.6 billion is also significant). However with Exodus' high-end customer list it was relatively quickly [22]bought for $755 million by the canny and cash-rich telco [23]Cable & Wireless. C&W had [24]previously bought another high-end hoster Digital Island for $340 million. C&W has also [25]just announced it is acquiring PSINet Japan. Together with its own facilities C&W is now a formidable player in the high-end of the hosting market, though integrating the businesses does present the risk of it all going wrong. Lower down in the hosting market dedicated server companies such as [26]Rackspace seem to be doing well, gaining share from the first generation colocation companies by offering convenience, service and reasonable cost effectiveness. Their target market is both those growing out of shared hosting, and those currently using leased lines but finding that unsatisfactory. On the technology side the development of Server Blades is an exciting change, perhaps the most significant change in hosting technology since the introduction of the 1U server. Although offering the potential of purchase cost as well as space saving, to date they are offered at a high price, and it will be hard to break out of this situation during the Internet economy downturn. Current solutions like [27]Cobalt RAQ servers offer better value for money. The downturn in the Internet economy also affects the Cobalt server solution though, with Sun's Chief Operating Officer Ed Zander [28]remarking that the acquisition of Cobalt Networks hadn't been all that Sun had hoped. We have noticed that some dedicated server providers, such as Rackspace, have stopped offering a Cobalt server option, instead offering Linux systems with third party web control panels such as [29]Plesk Server Administrator or [30]Sphera HostingDirector rather than Cobalt's web-based user interface. Both Sphera HostingDirector and the recently launched [31]Covalent Enterprise Ready Server offer centralised web-based management of multiple servers as alternative solutions to the [32]Cobalt Control Station. Despite the failure of many internet based companies over the last year, there has been steady growth in the numbers of sites performing encrypted transactions over the internet. Verisign [33]reported in July that 87% of SSL certificates were being renewed, while our own SSL Survey shows growth of around 37% over the year. Internet Research from Netcraft. Netcraft does commercial internet research projects. These include custom cuts on the Web Server Survey data, hosting industry analysis, corporate use of internet technology and bespoke projects. All of the data is gathered through network exploration, not teleresearch. sales@netcraft.com Network Security Testing from Netcraft. Netcraft provides automated network security testing of customer networks and consultancy audits of ecommerce sites, Clients include IBM, Hewlett Packard, Deloitte & Touche, Energis, Britannic Asset Management, Guardian Royal Exchange, Lloyds of London, Laura Ashley, etc. Details at http://www.netcraft.com/security/ References 1. http://www.netcraft.com/survey/year1.html 2. http://www.netcraft.com/survey/index-200108.html 3. http://www.icann.org/tlds/ 4. http://www.register.com/ 5. http://www.netcraft.com/whats?site=futuresite.register.com 6. http://www.netcraft.com/ 7. http://uptime.netcraft.com/ 8. http://www.netcraft.com/survey/index-200007.html#active 9. http://www.dialtone.com/ 10. http://eu.dialtone.com/ 11. http://www.rackspace.com/ 12. http://www.rackspace.co.uk/about/newsroom/listings.php3?hidelistings=1&detail=1055 13. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6773687.html?tag=mn_hd 14. http://www.namezero.com/ 15. http://anything.homestead.com/ 16. http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2001-19.html 17. http://www.cert.org/body/advisories/CA200126_FA200126.html 18. http://www.namezero.com/ 19. http://www.netsol.com/ 20. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-7309927.html 21. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-6155076.html 22. http://investor.cnet.com/investor/news/newsitem/0-9900-1028-8026522-0.html 23. http://www.cw.com/ 24. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-5915414.html 25. http://www.cw.com/th_05.asp?ID=mc_506dec1101 26. http://www.rackspace.com/ 27. http://www.cobalt.com/products/raq/ 28. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-7383790.html?tag=rltdnws 29. http://www.plesk.com/html/products/psa/ 30. http://www.sphera.com/ 31. http://www.covalent.com/products/enterprise_ready/ 32. http://www.cobalt.com/products/controlstation/ 33. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6695510.html To unsubscribe from the Netcraft Web Server Survey Announcements list send the message unsubscribe webserver-survey to majordomo@netcraft.com To resubscribe send the message subscribe webserver-survey Mike -- Mike Prettejohn mhp@@netcraft.com Phone +44 1225 447500 Fax +44 1225 448600 Netcraft Rockfield House Granville Road Bath BA1 9BQ England