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)