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The June 2001 Netcraft Web Server Survey is out;
http://www.netcraft.com/survey/
Top Servers
Server May 2001 Percent June 2001 Percent Change
Apache 18069603 62.24 18466153 63.02 0.78
Microsoft-IIS 5957240 20.52 5972321 20.38 -0.14
Netscape-Enterprise 1778958 6.13 1768673 6.04 -0.09
Zeus 798745 2.75 810108 2.76 0.01
Active Sites
Developer May 2001 Percent June 2001 Percent Change
Apache 7230089 61.53 7346025 62.42 0.89
Microsoft 3062949 26.07 3076623 26.14 0.07
iPlanet 324722 2.76 273293 2.32 -0.44
Counting Computers Running the Web
A fuller verson of this analysis with tables and graphs
is available at http://www.netcraft.com/survey/
One of the common observations made about the Web Server Survey is
that it counts hostnames rather than physical computers, and so is not
a suitable metric to indicate hardware installed base or license
sales.
Technically sophisticated hosting companies can run thousands of
sites on a single computer, and the great majority of the
world's web sites are located at hosting and co-location companies
rather than on peripheral networks.
Building on the operating system detection techniques used by the
[1]What's that site running? query and Netcraft's commercial
research, we have attempted to address this.
Netcraft has developed a technique that, with an error margin,
can give an indication of the numbers of actual computers we find
on the Web, together with the operating system and web server software
used.
By arranging for a number of IP addresses to send packets to us near
simultaneously, low level TCP/IP characteristics can be used to work
out, within an error margin, if those packets originate from the same
computer, by checking for similarities in a number of TCP/IP protocol
header fields. To build up sufficient certainty that IP addresses on
the same computer have been identified many visits to the sites in the
Web Server Survey are necessary, which takes place over a period
of over a month.
Round robin DNS, reverse web proxies, some load balancing/failover
products like [2]Cisco LocalDirector and [3]BIG-IP and some
connection level firewalls hide a number of web servers behind a
hostname.
A limitation of the technique is that only a single "front"
web server will be counted. Additionally with some of these products
the operating system detected is that of the "front" device rather
than the web server behind.
Operating Systems used by Computers running public Web Sites, March 2001
OS group Percentage Composition
Windows 49.2% Windows 2000, NT4, NT3, Win95, Win98
Linux 28.5% Linux
Solaris 7.6% Solaris 2, Solaris 7, Solaris 8
BSD 6.3% BSDI BSD/OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
Other Unix 2.4% AIX, Compaq Tru64, HP-UX, IRIX, etc.
Other non-Unix 2.5% MacOS, NetWare, proprietary IBM OSs
Unknown 3.6%
[4]Microsoft Windows has a significantly higher share of the web when
one counts by computer, rather than by host, as in the conventional
Web Server Survey. The survey shows 49% of the computers running the
web are Windows based; a little more than all of the Unix-like
operating systems combined. As some of the 3.6% of computers not
identified by Netcraft operating system detector will in reality be
Windows systems, it would be fair to say about half of public Web
Servers world-wide are run on Microsoft operating systems.
Although [5]Apache running on various Unix systems runs more sites than
Windows, Apache is heavily deployed at hosting companies and ISPs who
strive to run as many sites as possible on a single computer to save
costs. Windows is most popular with end-user and self hosted sites,
where the host to computer ratio is much smaller.
[6]Linux is the second most commonly used operating system. Linux has
been consistently gaining share since this survey started, but,
interestingly, not significantly to Windows detriment. Operating
systems which have lost share have been Solaris and other proprietary
operating systems, and to a small degree BSD.
One could characterise this process as Solaris being continually
chased further and further up market by Intel based operating systems,
with Sun in turn progressively eliminating the other proprietary Unix
operating systems. Intel enjoys both the benefits of the boom in
freely available Unix software and the ascent of Windows, with
competing processors correspondingly marginalised in the web server
market.
Sun would reasonably point out that this analysis simply counts the
number of computers rather than their cost, and that a $1K Intel
machine would count the same as a $1M E10K system, and that while
Windows matains its share in Fortune 500 companies, the relative
position between Linux and Solaris is approximately reversed in these
companies.
The analysis also gives some quantification of the rate at which sites
migrate to Windows 2000 from NT. In March 2001, a little over a year
after the introduction of the operating system 25% of the computers
running Microsoft operating systems are running Windows 2000.
Regional Variations
The results summarised above are from a world-wide perspective and
significant variations can occur in regional analyses.
Countries with the largest proportions of Windows web servers are
China, South Africa and Singapore. Countries in which Unix-like
operating systems maintain the strongest lead are Poland, Hungary, Japan,
Russia and Germany, with Linux strong in Poland and Hungary,
and BSD in Russia and Japan, while in Finland, home country of
Linus Torvalds, Windows has a tiny lead over Linux!
References
1. http://www.netcraft.com/whats/
1. http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/cxsr/400/
2. http://www.f5.com/f5products/bigip/
3. http://www.microsoft.com/
4. http://www.apache.org/
5. http://www.linux.org/
- - - - - - - - Commercial Internet Research from Netcraft - - - - - - - - -
Netcraft also does commercial internet research projects. These include
custom cuts on the Web Server Survey data, virtual 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
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ecommerce Site Security - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We provide is a weekly network security test of customer networks
The service is described at
http://www.netcraft.com/security/scheduled.html
Also, we perform audits of ecommerce sites which involve code reviews of
the web applications.
Details at
http://www.netcraft.com/security/ecommerce.html
Clients include IBM, Hewlett Packard, Deloitte & Touche, Energis,
Britannic Assurance, Guardian Royal Exchange, Lloyds of London, etc
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Mike
--
Mike Prettejohn
mhp@@netcraft.com Phone +44 1225 447500 Fax +44 1225 448600
Netcraft Rockfield House Granville Road Bath BA1 9BQ England