If I were going to learn either Apache or IIS, which should it be, and why?


My initial response would be "Apache of course, because it's by far the most
widely used". But I see from Netcraft

http://survey.netcraft.com/Reports/200709/graphs.html

that IIS usage has been growing rapidly, mostly at the expense of Apache.
(And there's the sudden appearance of Google, which I know nothing about but
don't want to ignore.) I still remember what MS did to Netscape with IE. Is
that going to happen again?


What are the relative benefits and drawbacks of each?

Post removed (X-No-Archive: yes)

IIS is great if you want your webserver to get hacked or infected by viruses.

On Sep 1, 6:22 pm, "Paul Pedersen" <nos... [at] no.spam> wrote:
> If I were going to learn either Apache or IIS, which should it be, and why?
>
> My initial response would be "Apache of course, because it's by far the most
> widely used". But I see from Netcraft
>
> http://survey.netcraft.com/Reports/200709/graphs.html
>
> that IIS usage has been growing rapidly, mostly at the expense of Apache.
> (And there's the sudden appearance of Google, which I know nothing about but
> don't want to ignore.) I still remember what MS did to Netscape with IE. Is
> that going to happen again?
>
> What are the relative benefits and drawbacks of each?

it wont happen again no, because you have to pay for IIS, and for all
the snapins and addons that you have to use to provide the
functionality that apache has.
oh and then theres china

Hi Paul,
use the one you are already more familiar with. Your learning curve is
better.

Long long ago, apache has been clearly the better (because more virus save),
but that was the time of win nt 4 and iis 4 (a security nightmare).

The now topic versions of apache and iis, there is no significant difference
for virus or hacking vulnerability. You have to consider basic security
rules on both worlds.

The most used languages for dynamic weg pages, php and asp.net, can be run
on both worlds. So no significant difference for this.

I myself prefer iis, because i am familiar with, because apache has php (a
security nightmare, imho) built in, because iis has asp.net built in.

greetings from germany
chris

On Sep 3, 7:08 am, Christian Stüben <cs.st... [at] gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi Paul,
> use the one you are already more familiar with. Your learning curve is
> better.
>
> Long long ago, apache has been clearly the better (because more virus sav=
e),
> but that was the time of win nt 4 and iis 4 (a security nightmare).
>
> The now topic versions of apache and iis, there is no significant differe=
nce
> for virus or hacking vulnerability. You have to consider basic security
> rules on both worlds.
>
> The most used languages for dynamic weg pages, php and asp.net, can be run
> on both worlds. So no significant difference for this.
>
> I myself prefer iis, because i am familiar with, because apache has php (a
> security nightmare, imho) built in, because iis has asp.net built in.
>
> greetings from germany
> chris

just to set the record straight, php isnt built into apache, you have
to deliberately run php as an apache module if you want php. Php is
also not a security nightmare! Any programmer worth his or her salt
will write good secure good. Php is a popular and easy language which
makes it a good first language for budding web developers, and of
course eveyone knows an uncle who is dabbling with it, downloading any
old script and "getting it working" which is why php appears to be
insecure.
Apache has a module called mod security which is an extremely advanced
web application firewall. If you are worried about security for
either .NET/PHP/Perl/Ruby etc... on IIS or Apache at all, then run
apache as a proxy server in front of your web server - which can be
IIS or Apache, you can then use mod_security to write per application
rules to prevent weaknesses in the code from being exploited.
Apache is quite often used in front of IIS servers because in many
cases the .NET code running on the IIS server is closed source, or not
modifiable under the terms of the license that came with the product,
and since the code cannot be modified, the only other way to secure it
is by using a web application firewall.
Personally I use Apache because I prefer it and I think it is much
more configurable, and of course open source is good for the world.

> IIS is great if you want your webserver to get hacked or infected by viruses.

Oh, bull. Either server is only as secure as the person running it. I will grant
you that IIS is more susceptible to ignorance.
--
Crash
Running: Windows 2000 Pro - IIS 5 - Apache 2.2.4 - PHP 5.2.1 - Perl 5.8.8

> If I were going to learn either Apache or IIS, which should it be, and why?

Why do you want to learn either? Are you planning a career as a server manager?
Do you have a specific application in mind?

I learned about IIS first because my web site was hosted on an IIS server, and I
wanted to learn the nuts and bolts. My Windows 2000 Pro system comes with a
"lite" version of IIS, which I used as a classroom and test bed. Then I lost the
IIS host and had to move my website to an Apache host. That meant converting all
my ASP (not .net) server side scripts to PHP, and other changes. So I installed
Apache, PHP, and Perl on my home machine and am climbing another learning curve.
I currently have both servers installed, and I really can't say which is
"better." They both work, if set up properly.

The point of this autobiography is that there is no simple answer to "IIS or
Apache?" Which to use depends on your circumstances. If you just want to learn
for some unspecified future application, learn about both. If you are running XP
Pro, I believe there is a server included, although you will have to install it.
Apache is available for free online.
--
Crash
Running: Windows 2000 Pro - IIS 5 - Apache 2.2.4 - PHP 5.2.1 - Perl 5.8.8

Thanks to all for the info.

I have practically zero experience with either IIS or Apache. But I will
soon be responsible for a web site. (Someone else will write it and I will
maintain it). The site will require rather extensive database use. There
will be e-commerce, plus subscription tracking, encrypted downloads, and
similar tasks. It was recommended to me to use Apache on Linux, PHP, and
MySQL. I have used none of those previously, but I've been programming for
many years.

I am responsible for choosing the hosting company, server, database,
everything (offsite shared host so far, dedicated later if things go well).
At this point, the decision is close to being set in stone, but I didn't
want to go into it without at least some knowledge of the alternatives.

I use WinXP Pro for development, so a free stripped-down version of IIS is
available. And of course I could specify IIS on the production server too.
I'm only trying to make things as easy as possible on myself, while still
making decent decisions keeping future requirements in mind.

Thanks again to all.



""Crash" Dummy" <dvader [at] deathstar.mil> wrote in message
news:eSTCi.1$cz5.0 [at] newsfe12.lga...
>> If I were going to learn either Apache or IIS, which should it be, and
>> why?
>
> Why do you want to learn either? Are you planning a career as a server
> manager?
> Do you have a specific application in mind?
>
> I learned about IIS first because my web site was hosted on an IIS server,
> and I
> wanted to learn the nuts and bolts. My Windows 2000 Pro system comes with
> a
> "lite" version of IIS, which I used as a classroom and test bed. Then I
> lost the
> IIS host and had to move my website to an Apache host. That meant
> converting all
> my ASP (not .net) server side scripts to PHP, and other changes. So I
> installed
> Apache, PHP, and Perl on my home machine and am climbing another learning
> curve.
> I currently have both servers installed, and I really can't say which is
> "better." They both work, if set up properly.
>
> The point of this autobiography is that there is no simple answer to "IIS
> or
> Apache?" Which to use depends on your circumstances. If you just want to
> learn
> for some unspecified future application, learn about both. If you are
> running XP
> Pro, I believe there is a server included, although you will have to
> install it.
> Apache is available for free online.
> --
> Crash
> Running: Windows 2000 Pro - IIS 5 - Apache 2.2.4 - PHP 5.2.1 - Perl 5.8.8
>
>

"Paul Pedersen" <nospam [at] no.spam> schreef in bericht
news:CpidndChK_Uq3EHbnZ2dnUVZ_jmdnZ2d [at] comcast.com...
> I have practically zero experience with either IIS or Apache. But I will
> soon be responsible for a web site. (Someone else will write it and I will
> maintain it). The site will require rather extensive database use. There
> will be e-commerce, plus subscription tracking, encrypted downloads, and
> similar tasks. It was recommended to me to use Apache on Linux, PHP, and
> MySQL. I have used none of those previously, but I've been programming for
> many years.
>
> I am responsible for choosing the hosting company, server, database,
> everything (offsite shared host so far, dedicated later if things go
> well).
That's just a minor change your hoster will force you into when your site(s)
overload their shared server.
The change is minor as the hoster still takes care of the machine and its OS
and probably the daily backup.
You probably won't be able to tell the difference, but by checking the
invoice. :-|

> At this point, the decision is close to being set in stone, but I didn't
> want to go into it without at least some knowledge of the alternatives.

> I use WinXP Pro for development, so a free stripped-down version of IIS is
> available. And of course I could specify IIS on the production server too.
> I'm only trying to make things as easy as possible on myself, while still
> making decent decisions keeping future requirements in mind.
For the forseeable future you are not in full control of the server and will
have to bend your mind in the same twist(s) the hoster did to get a
development system behave like the real thing anyway ...
To this point there is only 1 way to bail out: obtain a hosting contract for
TWO sites, one for real -optionally dedecated- and one for test.

BTW Apache, MySQL and PHP are available on Windows too ... been there, done
that !!

HansH

"shimmyshack" <matt.farey [at] gmail.com> schreef in bericht
news:1188810986.038462.17580 [at] w3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
On Sep 3, 7:08 am, Christian Stüben <cs.st... [at] gmx.de> wrote:
>> I myself prefer iis, because i am familiar with, because apache has php
>> (a
>> security nightmare, imho) built in, because iis has asp.net built in.
> just to set the record straight, php isnt built into apache, you have
> to deliberately run php as an apache module if you want php. Php is
> also not a security nightmare! ...
> Apache has a module called mod security which is an extremely
> advanced web application firewall.
For the records, mod_security is a third party module too and thus has to be
installed seperately and intentionally aswell.

HansH

"Crash" Dummy wrote...
> The point of this autobiography is that there is no simple answer
> to "IIS or Apache?" Which to use depends on your circumstances.
> If you just want to learn for some unspecified future application,
> learn about both. If you are running XP Pro, I believe there is a
> server included, although you will have to install it.

First a alightly off-topic question to "Crash".

Have you used ActiveX at all inside of PHP and Apache?

Next, some answers for the OP.

The NetScape browser was not very smart and I believe it ended up
as an added expense which no one wanted to pay, and Microsoft added
ActiveX (and a bunch of security problems) to Internet Explorer. It
also came free with the operating system. So while there were / are
some security issues with Internet Explorer (and all Microsoft OS's
in general), there happens to be a lot of FREEDOM available. The
freedom, meaning it's easy to do things (the Visual BASIC and ActiveX
interfaces make it all a dream-come-true for programmers). So there's
a lot of benefits for those using / doing work with IIS and Internet
Explorer and VBA.

Apache offers some advantages to IIS. There's PHP which is a true
blessing for web-site programming and is easy to work with, much in
the same way Visual BASIC is easy to work with. And there's Perl as
well which offers an alternative, highly sophisticated scripting
language which probably works a bit better than PHP but ends up as
a tad bit more foreign, but once you learn the foreign characters
used in Perl it ends up as a very powerful and beautiful language.

There's a difference between Perl and other scripting languages as
well. Perl gets compiled before it runs. Other scripting languages
get loaded, and then parsed/run line-by-line. If there's a script
error during the compile, I think Perl refuses to run the script
and reports the error, so that perhaps provides an advantage over
other scripting languages.

If you set up IIS upon Windows XP, Microsoft broke XP, so that the
number of connections limited to it (XP Pro, as IIS 5.1 does not
come with XP Home) 10 concurrent connections. You'll need to get
another TCPIP.SYS to get around that problem.

TCPIP.SYS is the driver for TCPIP connections/networking and is
found in %systemroot%\system32\drivers\tcpip.sys.

There might be similar problems with other MS operating systems.

Hope this information is helpful and useful.

--
Jim Carlock
North Carolina Swimming Pool Builders
http://www.aquaticcreationsnc.com/

> First a alightly off-topic question to "Crash".

> Have you used ActiveX at all inside of PHP and Apache?


Nope. My web offerings are visited mostly by terminally paranoid security
freaks. I can't even use client side scripts. Also, I didn't even know you
*could* use ActiveX in PHP and Apache! I am pretty new to Apache.
--
Crash
Running: Windows 2000 Pro - IIS 5 - Apache 2.2.4 - PHP 5.2.1 - Perl 5.8.8

Paul Pedersen wrote:
> My initial response would be "Apache of course, because it's by far the most
> widely used". But I see from Netcraft
>
> http://survey.netcraft.com/Reports/200709/graphs.html
>
> that IIS usage has been growing rapidly, mostly at the expense of Apache.

the netcraft web server survey is a census - it attempts to look at the Server
header on every web(virtual)host on the internet, regardless of whether or not
that website has any traffic. http://survey.netcraft.com/mechanics.html

the netcraft survey gives as much credence to a desktop computer accidentally
running a web service as it does to a domain-parking web server that has a
million domains with zero daily traffic as it gives to a top-tier, high traffic
server or server farm operating under a single hostname like cnn.com,
myspace.com, wikipedia.org, google.com, cnet.com, or facebook.com, and fielding
millions or billions of requests per day.

imho it would be much more interesting to crawl the 100 or 1,000 most-trafficked
web servers on the net and look at what's visible in _their_ Server: header:

http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=n one

here's a breakdown of Server: header among the alexa top-100 sites (some of
these sites do not publish a Server: header, so the total is not 100)

Server: count
======= =====
Apache 40
Microsoft-IIS 12
gws 21
nginx 3
AOLserver 2
GFE 2
lighttpd 2
Server 2
Resin 1
DMS 1
LiteSpeed 1
BWS 1
web 1
aris 1
TUX 1

--sean


--
sean dreilinger - http://durak.org/sean/

Paul Pedersen schrieb:
> If I were going to learn either Apache or IIS, which should it be, and why?
>
>
> My initial response would be "Apache of course, because it's by far the most
> widely used". But I see from Netcraft
>
> http://survey.netcraft.com/Reports/200709/graphs.html
>
> that IIS usage has been growing rapidly, mostly at the expense of Apache.
> (And there's the sudden appearance of Google, which I know nothing about but
> don't want to ignore.) I still remember what MS did to Netscape with IE. Is
> that going to happen again?
>
>
> What are the relative benefits and drawbacks of each?

Apache has been made by real computer experts.
IIS has been made by Microsoft's marketing division.

--
Regards,
Trinity Of Matrix
E-Mail (only for spammer): trinity.matrix [at] localhost.localdomain

Interesting, thanks.

Any idea how those numbers have been changing over time?



"sean dreilinger" <sean-usenet [at] durak.org> wrote in message
news:13ehshp5eunabf8 [at] corp.supernews.com...
> Paul Pedersen wrote:
>> My initial response would be "Apache of course, because it's by far the
>> most
>> widely used". But I see from Netcraft
>>
>> http://survey.netcraft.com/Reports/200709/graphs.html
>>
>> that IIS usage has been growing rapidly, mostly at the expense of Apache.
>
> the netcraft web server survey is a census - it attempts to look at the
> Server
> header on every web(virtual)host on the internet, regardless of whether or
> not
> that website has any traffic. http://survey.netcraft.com/mechanics.html
>
> the netcraft survey gives as much credence to a desktop computer
> accidentally
> running a web service as it does to a domain-parking web server that has a
> million domains with zero daily traffic as it gives to a top-tier, high
> traffic
> server or server farm operating under a single hostname like cnn.com,
> myspace.com, wikipedia.org, google.com, cnet.com, or facebook.com, and
> fielding
> millions or billions of requests per day.
>
> imho it would be much more interesting to crawl the 100 or 1,000
> most-trafficked
> web servers on the net and look at what's visible in _their_ Server:
> header:
>
> http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=n one
>
> here's a breakdown of Server: header among the alexa top-100 sites (some
> of
> these sites do not publish a Server: header, so the total is not 100)
>
> Server: count
> ======= =====
> Apache 40
> Microsoft-IIS 12
> gws 21
> nginx 3
> AOLserver 2
> GFE 2
> lighttpd 2
> Server 2
> Resin 1
> DMS 1
> LiteSpeed 1
> BWS 1
> web 1
> aris 1
> TUX 1
>
> --sean
>
>
> --
> sean dreilinger - http://durak.org/sean/

Paul Pedersen wrote:
> Interesting, thanks.
> Any idea how those numbers have been changing over time?

not continuously, but i did the same thing in july 2000:
http://durak.org/sean/pubs/bss/

2000
========================
38% - 48% apache,
22% - 27% microsoft IIS
18% - 25% netscape server

and last week, among the alexa top-100 sites, we had:


2007
========================
~40% apache
~21% gws (google)
~12% microsoft IIS

hth

--sean

> "sean dreilinger" <sean-usenet [at] durak.org> wrote in message
>> imho it would be much more interesting to crawl the 100 or 1,000
>> most-trafficked
>> web servers on the net and look at what's visible in _their_ Server:
>> header:
>>
>> http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=n one
>>
>> here's a breakdown of Server: header among the alexa top-100 sites (some
>> of
>> these sites do not publish a Server: header, so the total is not 100)
>>
>> Server: count
>> ======= =====
>> Apache 40
>> Microsoft-IIS 12
>> gws 21
>> nginx 3
>> AOLserver 2
>> GFE 2
>> lighttpd 2
>> Server 2
>> Resin 1
>> DMS 1
>> LiteSpeed 1
>> BWS 1
>> web 1
>> aris 1
>> TUX 1


--
sean dreilinger - http://durak.org/sean/