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Apache Usage in the Most Popular Web Sites: Take That, ENT
Jul 27, 2000, 00 :41 UTC (28 Talkback[s]) (7255 reads) (Other stories by Kevin Reichard)

By

Anyone who has followed the recent brouhaha over Web-server market shares would know that the numbers can be twisted to serve any number of agendas: the boys at ENT polled brochureware sites to argue that Microsoft IIS was gaining in popularity in the Fortune 500, while Apache partisans pointed out that the exhaustive Netcraft survey revealed the Apache Web server to be the most popular Web server in the world--by far.

Many of you observing this spat from the sidelines pointed out that perhaps the best test of a Web server is to poll the busiest Web sites in the world to see what these sites were running. If a Web server was powerful enough to serve the needs of these popular sites, it would go a long way in establishing the credentials of the server. Let's be honest: if you're looking for a Web server on a site that generates a decent amount of traffic, it's going to be more important that Apache is the basis for the immensely popular About.com, not that IIS redirects traffic on www.kmart.com.

Using the Media Metrix Top 50 list, we checked out the 30 most popular Web sites through Netcraft to see what the true workhorses of the Web are running. While there are a few different sites that rank sites differently (there's a 100 Hot sites list that differs greatly), Media Metrix is generally regarded as being somewhat authoritative in the field in ranking the most popular Web sites.

The numbers shouldn't be surprising to any faithful reader of Apache Today, as Apache was the most popular Web server used among these Web heavyweights. We used the server look-up facility at Netcraft not just only at the main URL but also at other popular sites owned by the same group. This is the methodology used by Media Metrix to determine their ratings, and we didn't see any reason to deviate from that methodology.

Here are the top servers:
Apache 21
Netscape (Enterprise, FastTrack, Communications) 17
Microsoft IIS 13
Unknown 7
AltaVista 1
NaviServer/AOLServer 1
Roxen 1
StrongHold 1
Yug 1

Obviously, this isn't a slam dunk for Apache. Nor was anyone at Apache Today expecting it to be. But the trends exhibited by the top 30 Web sites in terms of popularity should end any talk about the momentum of IIS in the marketplace, and it should also point out the amazing popularity of Netscape servers. (It also should point out that the taste of Microsoft dog food is even more distasteful to the folks at Redmond that we thought: both HotMail and LinkExchange run Apache on FreeBSD, and both of those are amazingly popular sites.)

There were some major surprises in the operating-system numbers. Solaris was by far the most popular operating system, almost lapping various Microsoft Windows OSes. For all its recent popularity as a server OS, Linux lagged far behind both Solaris and Microsoft Windows. And that stealth OS, BSD, tied Linux.

Here are the top operating systems:
Solaris 26
Windows NT/2000 14
FreeBSD/BSD/OS 9
Linux 9
Compaq Tru64 UNIX 3
IRIX 1

Here are the results of the rankings (as established by Media Metrix) and the servers (as established by Netcraft). There may be cases where an additional corporate URL was missed (this is not a science, after all), but by and large these ranking represent the server/OS usage among the Internet/Web heavyweights.

1. AOL
www.aol.com is running NaviServer/2.0 AOLserver/2.3.3 on Solaris
www.netscape.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 on Solaris

2. Microsoft
www.microsoft.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000
www.msn.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000
www.linkexchange.com is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) on FreeBSD
www.hotmail.com is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.8 SSLeay/0.9.0b on FreeBSD

3. Yahoo
www.yahoo.com is running unknown on FreeBSD

4. Lycos
www.lycos.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 SP3 on Compaq Tru64 UNIX
www.whowhere.com is running Yug on Solaris
www.wired.com is running Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) on Solaris
wired.lycos.com is running Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) on Solaris
hotwired.lycos.com is running Apache/1.3.4 HotWired/KCPG (Unix) on Solaris
www.matchmaker.com is running Unknown/0.0.0 on Linux
www.hotbot.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0
richmedia.lycos.com is running Apache/1.3.11 (Unix) PHP/4.0b3 on FreeBSD
music.lycos.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000
yp.superpages.com is running Netscape-FastTrack/3.02 on IRIX

5. Excite@Home
www.excite.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/2.01 on Solaris
magellan.excite.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/2.01 on Solaris
travel.excite.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/2.01 on Solaris
www.webcrawler.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/2.01 on Solaris
corp.excite.com is running Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) mod_perl/1.22 mod_fastcgi/2.2.2 on Solaris

6. Go.com
www.go.com is running unknown on Solaris
www.espn.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
abcnews.go.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98

7. About.com
www.about.com is running Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) on FreeBSD

8. AltaVista
www.altavista.com is running AV/1.0.1 on Compaq Tru64 UNIX
babelfish.altavista.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98

9. NBCi/Xoom
www.xoom.com is running Apache/1.2.5 on FreeBSD
nbci.snap.com is running Netscape-Communications/1.12 on Solaris

10. Amazon.com
www.amazon.com is running Stronghold/2.4.2 Apache/1.3.6 C2NetEU/2412 (Unix) on Compaq Tru64 UNIX

11. Time-Warner
www.timewarner.com is running unknown on BSD/OS
www.cnn.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/2.01 on Solaris
www.time.com is running unknown on BSD/OS

12. Real Networks
www.realnetworks.com is running This·is·a·real·operating·system·from·the·free·world·1.2alpha12 on Linux
www.real.com is running ROXEN·running·on·a·real·operating·system·from·the·free·world·1.2.46 on Linux

13. Go2Net
www.go2net.com is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) ApacheJServ/1.0 g2am/1.35 adutil/1.7 g2ad/1.62 PHP/3.0.16 mod_perl/1.16_03-dev on Linux
www.siliconinvestor.com is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) g2am/1.35 adutil/1.7 g2ad/1.61 ApacheJServ/1.0 on Solaris
www.metacrawler.com is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) ApacheJServ/1.0 g2am/1.35 adutil/1.7 g2ad/1.62 PHP/3.0.16 mod_perl/1.16_03-dev on Linux
www.authorizenet.com is running Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) PHP/4.0.0 on Linux

14. EBay
www.ebay.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98

15. AskJeeves
www.askjeeves.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98

16. Viacom Online
www.mtv.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 SP3 on Solaris
www.vh1.com is running unknown on BSD/OS

17. LookSmart
www.looksmart.com is running Apache/1.3.4 (Unix) on Solaris

18. eUniverse Network
www.euniverse.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
www.gagames.com is running Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) mod_perl/1.19 PHP/3.0.7 on Linux
www.dreamcast.net is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
www.ga-source.com is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) (Red Hat/Linux) mod_perl/1.19 PHP/3.0.7 on Linux
www.ga-rpg.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
ga-sports.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98

19. C|Net
www.cnet.com is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) on Solaris
www.news.com is running Netscape-Communications/1.12 on Solaris
www.search.com is running Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) mod_perl/1.21 on Linux
www.download.com is running Netscape-Communications/1.12 on Solaris

20. ZDNet
www.zdnet.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 SP3 on Solaris
www.hotfiles.com is running Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) on Solaris
www.linuxdevices.com is running Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) on Solaris

21. IWON.COM
www.iwon.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 SP3 on Solaris

22. Juno
www.juno.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/3.0L on Solaris

23. InfoSpace
www.infospace.com is running unknown on Windows 2000

24.GoTo.com
Sorry, couldn't determine what the server was for host www.goto.com on port 80.

25. Earthlink
www.earthlink.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 on Solaris

  Current Newswire:
Apache Module Registration: mod_xmlrpc

ApacheCon 2001 Europe cancelled

Apache Week issue 254 (13th July 2001) released

Great Bridge PostgreSQL 7.1 package announced

ApacheCon Dublin sessions listed

Apache Week issue 253 is out

ServerWatch: June 2001 Security Space Survey Results

zez.org: Security flaws in PHP

SECURITY: Bugtraq: Java servlet cross-site scripting vulnerability

mnoGoSearch 3.1.17 released

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 Talkback(s) Name  Date
  Ha!
Ya know Kevin, we should coordinate ourselves a little better, to prevent duplication of work! *lol* I was working on the same project for my article next week (although mine had spiffy graphs! :) *lol* Good article, though... Now I'll have to go back to writing about Web Automation... Oh darn. :-D *lol*



-- Matthew Keller http://mattwork.potsdam.edu/   
  Jul 27, 2000, 01:00:29
  Re: Ha!
Editors get first crack at these juicy topics. ;)

> Ya know Kevin, we should coordinate ourselves a little better, to prevent duplication of work! *lol* I was working on the same project for my article next week (although mine had spiffy graphs! :) *lol* Good article, though... Now I'll have to go back to writing about Web Automation... Oh darn. :-D *lol*


-- Matthew Keller http://mattwork.potsdam.edu/   
  Jul 27, 2000, 01:15:31
  Lycos
You forgot:
ftpsearch.lycos.com is running ftpsearch-gateway/4.0 on Solaris

This was originally developed by my university, NTNU in Trondheim, Norway.

  
  Jul 27, 2000, 13:48:22
  Re: Lycos
Well, I didn't forget, and Lycos presented a special challenge because it does own and operate so many discrete servers. I tried to limit things to the major URLs used by each firm. My friends at Lycos tell me that I did cover the major servers. One needed to draw the line somewhere. ;)

> You forgot:
ftpsearch.lycos.com is running ftpsearch-gateway/4.0 on Solaris
This was originally developed by my university, NTNU in Trondheim, Norway.
  
  Jul 27, 2000, 13:56:57
  Who cares about the top websites?
The only thing that these results show is what huge companies with gigantic pocket books use for their websites. These stats can't be very accurate in the real world because most people running a small .com business don't have the budger of AOL. I'm sure that if these tests were run on random .com addresses that solaris and NT/2000 would have significantly lower numbers.   
  Jul 27, 2000, 15:21:00
  Still US skew
OK

so when was the Internet US only - the survey you are basing the studt on is "Top 50 Digital Media/Web Properties At Home & At Work Combined in the United States"

Isn't there someone doing the same, but taking a more international view?

  
  Jul 27, 2000, 15:23:14
  Re: Who cares about the top websites?
I disagree. If I am launching a business and want to plan for success, I will want to make sure that I know what works in the real world. It would be much more meaningful for me to know that Yahoo uses BSD or that about.com uses Apache than to know that the randomly chosen www.kreichard.com runs Apache/1.3.0 (Unix) on BSD/OS. Plus, given the fact that Apache is freely available and IIS is bundled with NT/2000, I don't see budgetary concerns driving the choice of a Web server.

Don't forget that Yahoo, About.com, and many of the companies listed here did not start out as huge companies with gigantic pocketbooks.

> The only thing that these results show is what huge companies with gigantic pocket books use for their websites. These stats can't be very accurate in the real world because most people running a small .com business don't have the budger of AOL. I'm sure that if these tests were run on random .com addresses that solaris and NT/2000 would have significantly lower numbers.   
  Jul 27, 2000, 15:27:31
  Re: Still US skew
Good point, but for all practical purposes the Media Metrix survey is of the most popular sites in the world, despite the verbiage about the US, as usage in foreign contries lags WAY behind US usage. For example: the US Media Metrix poll gives AOL.com 59 million unique visitors. Compare that to the top spot in the UK Media Metrix poll, which gives it to Yahoo.com with _3.6_ million unique visitors, and the second spot went to Freeserve with 3.4 million unique visitors. (Yahoo.co.uk was separately measured, by the way; similarly, msn.com beat msn.co.uk.) The US sites are just miles beyond what is happening in the rest of the world in terms of traffic. I couldn't find an international site on the Media Metrix polls that would come close to breaking the Top 50 poll in the US.

> OK
so when was the Internet US only - the survey you are basing the studt on is "Top 50 Digital Media/Web Properties At Home & At Work Combined in the United States"
Isn't there someone doing the same, but taking a more international view?
  
  Jul 27, 2000, 15:42:39
  OS count - summary
It looks even better to me re-grouping it as:

Some flavor of Commercial *nix:30
Some flavor of 'Free' *nix:18
Some flavor of Windows:14   
  Jul 27, 2000, 18:59:04
  Re: Still US skew
Just to be a smartass ...

The Internet was US-only up until 1976.

-M

> OK
so when was the Internet US only - the survey you are basing the studt on is "Top 50 Digital Media/Web Properties At Home & At Work Combined in the United States"
Isn't there someone doing the same, but taking a more international view?
  
  Jul 27, 2000, 20:39:30
  Re: Re: Who cares about the top websites?
The best part is that these companies -do- have the deep pockets, yet more of them are using apache anyway. They go for the best, which is not especially the most expensive. The cheap ones are still running NT4, or maybe they're just wary of microsoft upgrades (as most of us are).   
  Jul 27, 2000, 22:19:10
  The ENT authers e-mail address
here is the authers e-mail address folks let him know what you think . I DID !!!!!

bekkersf@entmag.com

Thomas Wickline   
  Jul 28, 2000, 11:06:41
  Add one more for Time Warner
www.cnnfn.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/2.01 on Solaris

and let's not forget netcraft:

www.netcraft.com is running Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) mod_perl/1.20 on FreeBSD

  
  Jul 28, 2000, 11:16:02
  Re: Still US skew
America is a much bigger country than the UK, or in fact most other countrys where internet usage is common. This makes it very difficult for countries with smaller populations to get any where near the US, % of population with internet access is a much better measure than site hits, especially since .com sites such as aol.com will recieve a subsantial ammount of traffic from non US location. .com. I would be interested to know wheter yahoo.com recieves more hits from the uk than yahoo.co.uk, I suspect it does.

I did a liitle searching and came up with the following figures :-

% population with internet access

UK 27%
US 48%
Finland 52%

So the US has rougly twice the internet usage of the UK, still a big gap, but much better than your figures which suggest that the gap is 10 times !!!

Interestingly finland has an even better percentage. Perhaps surveys which rank world websites should take into account the population which they purport to serve,

  
  Jul 28, 2000, 11:17:33
  You're missing the point
The ENT article was about fortune 500 companies and yours is about top web sites. This is not the same thing.
I did read the ENT article and they don't say anything bad about Apache nor Linux nor anyone else.
I found it heart warming that MS does not come out first and must point out that fortune 500 companies make up a tiny ~0.001% of the total companies in the world and can not be regarded as representative of the web. Furthermore, most of these companies use the net as an electronic show room and have not invested much.
I agree that you need to convince that Apache is a good web server to run and you're doing a great job in that, but your answer is out of place.   
  Jul 28, 2000, 14:05:28
  Lycos is now on Windows 2000
Chalk another major site up to IIS: Lycos, the number four site, just adopted Windows 2000 and IIS 5.   
  Jul 28, 2000, 18:54:18
  Re: Re: Still US skew
% population with internet access
UK 27%
US 48%
Finland 52%

I don't know where you got your numbers from, but only 26% of American households have computers, let alone Internet access- Approximately 10% additional have no access at home, but access at a library or jobsite. We actually have a dismal rate- Although it varies based on income level- 48% of mid-to-upper middle class households would be pretty accurate, but not accross the board.

-- Matthew Keller http://mattwork.potsdam.edu/   
  Jul 28, 2000, 19:35:28
  eBay on Windows?
It's possible that the results are actually less favorable to NT/IIS than it first appears. I was surprised to see that www.ebay.com was said to be running NT/IIS when a recent article mentioned their decision to continue with Solaris servers.

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-1882022.html?tag=st.ne.1.srchres.ni

For instance searching on a presumably processor intensive subdomain returned :
search.ebay.com is running Zeus/3.3 on Solaris

however several other subdomains did return NT/IIS.


  
  Jul 28, 2000, 22:42:36
  MS has won over Lycos
Great work! But sorry to crash the party -- Lycos has moved *ALL* its sites onto Win2k/IIS. (Source : http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/000727/wa_microso.html)

B.W.

-------------------------------------
Web giant Lycos Inc. (NasdaqNM:LCOS - news), which recently moved all of its Web sites to Intel servers running Microsoft's Windows 2000.

Lycos Chief Information Officer Tim Wright said his company had been running Windows 2000 for months and found the new systems provided better performance.

``We're looking forward to continuing our relationship with Microsoft and Intel,'' Wright said, ``utilizing their e-business solutions to help us deliver industry-leading services to our customers.''

  
  Jul 29, 2000, 07:55:58
  Factoid
Um....the article mentions Microsoft not using IIS on Hotmail and LinkExchange....these companies/sites were aquired my Microsoft and were already every established, i'm sure that Microsoft (being a business) didn't see an immediate need/advantage to tear down the existing system and replace it with a NT server based one. If Microsoft had started these sites, they most certainly would have be done with IIS. They bought a package deal, and Apache/BSD was just part of it!   
  Jul 29, 2000, 19:58:58
  Yahoo uses Apache.
It's just not an out-of-the-box Apache install. :-)   
  Jul 29, 2000, 21:19:31
  Re: MS has won over Lycos
Nope. You are wrong. Do a Netcraft: the information I sent re: Lycos is still correct. Plus, some sources within the company say that this news is premature.

--Kevin

> Great work! But sorry to crash the party -- Lycos has moved *ALL* its sites onto Win2k/IIS. (Source : http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/000727/wa_microso.html)
B.W.
-------------------------------------
Web giant Lycos Inc. (NasdaqNM:LCOS - news), which recently moved all of its Web sites to Intel servers running Microsoft's Windows 2000.
Lycos Chief Information Officer Tim Wright said his company had been running Windows 2000 for months and found the new systems provided better performance.
``We're looking forward to continuing our relationship with Microsoft and Intel,'' Wright said, ``utilizing their e-business solutions to help us deliver industry-leading services to our customers.''
  
  Jul 30, 2000, 14:43:21
  Re: Factoid
Um....Microsoft tried to move HotMail to NT and the performance was so bad that they moved back to BSD. That attempt has been well-documented.

> Um....the article mentions Microsoft not using IIS on Hotmail and LinkExchange....these companies/sites were aquired my Microsoft and were already every established, i'm sure that Microsoft (being a business) didn't see an immediate need/advantage to tear down the existing system and replace it with a NT server based one. If Microsoft had started these sites, they most certainly would have be done with IIS. They bought a package deal, and Apache/BSD was just part of it!   
  Jul 30, 2000, 14:44:49
  Re: Lycos is now on Windows 2000
No, they didn't. The p.r. folks claim this, but Netcraft says otherwise.

Meanwhile, ebay is dumping Windows. So I guess it evens out. ;)

> Chalk another major site up to IIS: Lycos, the number four site, just adopted Windows 2000 and IIS 5.   
  Jul 30, 2000, 14:46:09
  Re: Re: MS has won over Lycos
> Nope. You are wrong. Do a Netcraft: the information I sent re: Lycos is still correct. Plus, some sources within the company say that this news is premature.

Sorry, Kevin, but Lycos has announced that they are in the process of migrating to a pure Win2K/IIS5 environment.

-- Matthew Keller http://mattwork.potsdam.edu/   
  Jul 31, 2000, 12:37:31
  MS moving Hotmail to Win2k/IIS
Source -- http://www.zdnet.com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011,2610894,00.html

"At present, 5 to 10 percent of Hotmail requests are being served by Windows 2000, according to Netcraft."

"Microsoft officials confirmed that the conversion is under way -- and will likely be finished by this fall."

-Bill
  
  Aug 3, 2000, 02:04:53
  Re: MS moving Hotmail to Win2k/IIS
Guess they have to eat their own dog food... good thing for them is they won't have to pay the horrendous licensing costs like anyone else who implements windoze. Linux will rule   
  Aug 4, 2000, 16:04:35
  Re: Re: Factoid
That is absolutely incorrect. Microsoft did a test move of HotMail to EXCHANGE 5.5, and that suffered poorly. However, thats not in any way a valid comparison. HotMail is a custom-written specific-use application. Its like comparing Lynx to Netscape Communicator. ANYBODY could write a custom HotMail replacement on any major OS, its really not that big of a deal.

For some strange reason, anti-MS fanatics try to use this as some sign from God that MS products are poor. But as was said before, HotMail was a fully functioning application (and company) when they were purchased by Microsoft. Only an idiot would take an app that was working perfectly well, and throw a ton of money at converting it just to satisfy the rabid barkings of a few misinformed folk.


> Um....Microsoft tried to move HotMail to NT and the performance was so bad that they moved back to BSD. That attempt has been well-documented.
> Um....the article mentions Microsoft not using IIS on Hotmail and LinkExchange....these companies/sites were aquired my Microsoft and were already every established, i'm sure that Microsoft (being a business) didn't see an immediate need/advantage to tear down the existing system and replace it with a NT server based one. If Microsoft had started these sites, they most certainly would have be done with IIS. They bought a package deal, and Apache/BSD was just part of it!   
  Oct 30, 2000, 15:22:00
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