What is a Web Server ?

Everything You Need to Know About Web Servers

What happens when you go to a website? Where does that website live? Web servers are the backbone of the Internet. They allow people all over the world to access the same information at the same time. Without web servers the web as we know it would be a bunch of code few people would have the ability to read or understand.

What is a Web Server?

The most basic answer is a web server is a program that translates code into a website and allows the interpreted code, or the web page, to be accessed from a remote computer. A web server program must on a computer somewhere. The computers that host the programs that interpret the code are also known as web servers.

Most of the time when people speak of web servers they are talking about the computers running the programs that let others view websites. Often a single web server will host hundreds or thousands of websites.

How Does a Web Server Work?

When you type a domain name into you web browser, your browser checks a database that tells your browser the IP address where the page you are looking for is stored. An IP address functions much like your home address, it communicates the physical place you are located.

Your web browser than connects with a computer at the IP address and requests the code and instructions from the web server on what to display and how to display it.

Problems With Web Servers

Web servers often are slow to respond to requests from web browsers because of bottlenecks. The wires that connect the entire world on the Internet are similar to the roads in any big city. If there are too many cars trying to get to the same place, there will be a traffic jam and everyone will have to wait their turn

What happens when there is not enough bandwidth is that the web server does not have the capacity to handle all the requests it is receiving. It may prioritize some requests, but many will be stuck waiting in line. This is a bottleneck.

Just as more lanes on a highway or ore efficient transit systems relieves congestion on a highway, greater bandwidth allows web servers to answer more requests and it speeds up you get to the web age you want.

Many web server providers have chronic bandwidth problems. They overload web servers with too many sites and fail to have adequate bandwidth. This results in poor performing websites. Darwin knows you don’t want your web server crashing just because your content went viral. We always have more than enough bandwidth. We never overload our web servers. We are an industry leader in both bandwidth and web server capacity, and have one of the lowest downtime rates in the market.

If you are looking for a reliable web server provider where you don’t have to worry about outages and downtime, see what Darwin can do for you.