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The April 2001 Netcraft Web Server Survey is out:
http://www.netcraft.com/survey/
Top Developers
Developer March 2001 Percent April 2001 Percent Change
Apache 17238004 60.25 17932251 62.55 2.30
Microsoft 5650634 19.75 5918319 20.64 0.89
iPlanet 1785337 6.24 1798490 6.27 0.03
Top Servers
Server March 2001 Percent April 2001 Percent Change
Apache 17238004 60.25 17932251 62.55 2.30
Microsoft-IIS 5648960 19.74 5916724 20.64 0.90
Netscape-Enterprise 1750429 6.12 1762872 6.15 0.03
Zeus 738068 2.58 779209 2.72 0.14
Rapidsite 395094 1.38 402829 1.41 0.03
thttpd 365445 1.28 369930 1.29 0.01
AOLserver 262650 0.92 272815 0.95 0.03
tigershark 182481 0.64 200620 0.70 0.06
WebSitePro 141737 0.50 119586 0.42 -0.08
Active Sites
Developer March 2001 Percent April 2001 Percent Change
Apache 6744817 61.13 7015250 61.67 0.54
Microsoft 2739893 24.83 2961984 26.04 1.21
iPlanet 251536 2.28 294594 2.59 0.31
The WebLogic server has dropped out of the table above because
Netcraft's HTTP requests failed for more than a million [1]Namezero
hosted websites this month. This appears to be because the requests
are being blocked by Namezero. This accounts for the drop in Other
share in this month's charts.
Netcraft did not release a report for the March 2001 survey, which
only saw small changes in share for the top servers. Instead this
April 2001 survey has been released early. The small March 2001
changes are tabulated [2]here should you wish to see them.
Around the Net
Tough times for domain registrars
The rate of growth of websites in the survey has shown a dramatic
decline, reflecting the reduction in new domain name registrations now
the dot-com bubble has burst, and perhaps the difficulty in finding
good new names. The last quarter has seen the survey size grow by just
over 1 million, or 3.9%, compared to over 4 million (44%) during the
same three months last year, and just under 1 million (24%) during
those months in 1999. Even allowing for the million or so [1]Namezero
WebLogic sites missing this month, this is a significant decline. This
can be seen in the [3]cumulative counts chart.
This is causing difficulties for some domain name registrars, with the
ICANN accredited registrar [4]BulkRegister, which has registered more
than 2.3 million domain names, [5]laying off 23 of their 33 staff,
plus the CEO. register.com has just hired [6]another CFO, so four
CFOs, including an interim appointment, have been in that post during
the last six months.
In the UK NetBenefit has made [7]executive changes, reduced staff
from 128 to 86, and refocused sales effort on high-end corporate
customers in response to the slowing market and a [8]loss of £2.5
million in six months. A small UK retail registrar
[9]DiscountDomains, which in fact used BulkRegister as wholesale
registrar, has become insolvent and ceased trading.
It is not yet clear if these are isolated incidents, or signs of more
widespread trouble coming. It may turn out that customers only too
happy to use the cheapest registrars during the boom, will regret it.
As well as the risk of registrar insolvency, customer service
responsiveness might be affected by cost-cutting.
Many registrars are doing their best to sell additional services, like
email and web hosting, but this is hard in an aggressive market-place,
and good hosting provision is difficult to achieve on a large scale.
However there should be somewhat better times for registrars within
the next two years, if they hold on. With most domains on a two year
renewal cycle, revenue should improve later this year, and through
2002, as cyclic renewal business from the boom times kicks in, even if
some domain-name speculators do abandon their domains. Some additional
business will be created when ICANN eventually brings the [10]seven
new generic top level domains into [11]operation. While non-ASCII
[12]Internationalised domain names would expand the total marketplace,
should the current trials go mainstream, much of the business would
likely go to national registrars rather than large .com players.
Apache 2 beta released
The first Apache 2 beta [13]was launched at the ApacheCon 2001
conference in March, one year after the first alpha. This beta gives
people outside the project the first good look at Apache 2, and allows
Apache module developers to start porting their modules. As such, we
wouldn't expect to see widespread deployment of the beta, and so far
Netcraft has only seen 20 sites in the survey running the beta
(Apache/2.0.14), mostly at apache.org.
The major enhancements Apache 2 brings are:
* Threading: to improve scalability. Apache can now run in a hybrid
multiprocess, multithreaded mode.
* Better support for non-Unix platforms: with a new Apache Portable
Runtime and multi-processing modules Apache can avoid
POSIX-emulation layers, improving performance and stability.
* Filtered input/output modules: allowing input and dynamic output
to be modified by a filter module, for example implementing simple
advert inclusion and control.
* IPv6 Support: allowing the next TCP/IP version to be used on
systems that support it.
The Apache Software Foundation had hoped to release Apache 2 beta late
last year, but [14]difficulties with filtered input/output and logging
prevented this. In the event work at a two day hackathon just before
Apachecon 2001 put the beta into a releasable state.
Commercial BSD on the move
The major purveyor of the FreeBSD OS CD-ROMs, [15]Walnut Creek, is on
the move again. Last year in March Walnut Creek [16]merged into
[17]Berkeley Software Design Inc, commonly called BSDi, who have their
own commercial version of BSD, BSD/OS. The talk was of BSDi sharing
some BSD/OS technical innovations with the FreeBSD Project, and
perhaps sharing some sources. Now BSDi is [18]selling off the BSD/OS
and Walnut Creek operations to Wind River, the VxWorks real-time OS
company, and keeping its recently acquired Intel-based server hardware
operation. As the BSDi name is going with BSD/OS, BSDi will rename
itself iXsystems Inc after the iXtreme name for its rack-mount
systems.
This appears to be a defensive move by Wind River, who must be
concerned that [19]embedded versions of Linux could make significant
dents in the softer end of the real-time marketplace. As cheap
hardware becomes more capable, it's easier for general purpose OSs to
be good enough for some embedded applications, particularly
less-critical consumer products, where simpler development on a
familiar general purpose OS can be a significant cost and
time-to-market benefit.
The Wind River [20]BSDi FAQ makes interesting reading.
[21]NetBSD and [22]OpenBSD are other open source versions of BSD,
besides [23]FreeBSD. DaemonNews, the BSD news site, has a good outline
history of the open source [24]BSD Family Tree.
While BSD sees very significant use by large Web hosters and ISPs in
our survey, it has not achieved significant mindshare widely, as Linux
has. This limits BSD's successes largely to a few particular areas,
with Internet infrastructure leading, starting from BSD's position as
a TCP/IP research vehicle giving BSD early on one of the most robust
TCP/IP stacks. It will be interesting to see how successfully Wind
River takes BSD/OS forward.
Dogfood
[25]AltaVista switched OS for its primary website to Linux on March
29th, forsaking its previous owner's Compaq Tru64 (nee Digital UNIX)
OS. Tru64 lost its other major reference website [26]Amazon to Linux
last September, and prior to that [27]Lycos switched to Windows last
July. This leaves Tru64 with the [28]Internet Movie Database, an
Amazon acquisition, and the [29]Vatican as its most prominent
websites.
Compaq itself used Tru64 from August 2000 to February 2001 for the
[30]www.compaq.com front-end web server, but then reverted back to
Windows. [31]www.digital.com still stands by Tru64, but simply
redirects to www.compaq.com.
The life-signs of the proprietary Unix brands, other than Solaris, are
not good in our Web Server Survey. Is the end of most proprietary Unix
flavours nigh?
References
1. http://www.namezero.com/
2. http://www.netcraft.com/Survey/index-200103.html
3. http://www.netcraft.com/survey/Reports/200104/overallb.gif
4. http://bulkregister.com/PR/01-03/PR03072001.phtml
5. http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article/0,,3_707581,00.html
6. http://www.atnewyork.com/people/article/0,1471,8511_711901,00.html
7. http://w3.netbenefit.co.uk/news.cfm?DisplayYear=2001&DisplayID=121
8. http://www.netbenefit.com/netbenefitinterim.html
9. http://www.discountdomains.co.uk/
10. http://www.icann.org/tlds/
11. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-5122051.html
12. http://www.icann.org/melbourne/idn-topic.htm
13. http://www.apacheweek.com/issues/01-04-06
14. https://apachetoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2000-12-20-001-06-NW-DP-LF
15. http://www.wccdrom.com/
16. http://www.bsdi.com/news/press/20000310
17. http://www.bsdi.com/
18. http://www.windriver.com/press/html/bsdi.html
19. http://www.embedded-linux.org/
20. http://www.windriver.com/press/html/bsdi_faq.html
21. http://www.netbsd.org/
22. http://www.openbsd.org/
23. http://www.freebsd.org/
24. http://www.daemonnews.org/200104/bsd_family.html
25. http://www.netcraft.com/whats?site=www.altavista.com
26. http://www.netcraft.com/whats?site=www.amazon.com
27. http://www.netcraft.com/whats?site=www.lycos.com
28. http://www.netcraft.com/whats?site=www.imdb.com
29. http://www.netcraft.com/whats?site=www.vatican.va
30. http://www.netcraft.com/whats?site=www.compaq.com
31. http://www.netcraft.com/whats?site=www.digital.com
Complete Story
Related Stories:
Apache 2.0.16 released as beta(Apr 09, 2001)
Apache 2.0.15 released as an alpha(Mar 28, 2001)
The February 2001 Netcraft Survey is Out: Apache Gains Market Share(Mar 01, 2001)
The January 2001 Netcraft Web Server Survey is out: Apache slips, IIS gains(Feb 01, 2001)
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