News
Netcraft Numbers: IIS Gains Ground, but Apache Dominates the Web
- By Scott Bekker
- 04/19/2001
Microsoft's IIS Web server gained modest ground in April, but the open source Apache Web server continues to dominate the Web as the server of choice, according to the latest
survey from
Netcraft.
Each month, Netcraft polls millions of servers with HTTP requests to determine what software powers Web servers around the world. The April survey hit more than 28 million sites.
Microsoft's Internet Information Server, and some older Microsoft Web server software, accounted for 26 percent of all active Web servers Netcraft polled – a distant second to the nearly 62 percent of servers running Apache.
IIS' gain of 222,091 active servers in April compared with March was an 8 percent increase to total nearly 3 million servers. Apache gained 4 percent, although the number translates into 270,433 new servers for a total of 6.7 million servers.
IPlanet servers, which include Netscape Web servers and are used heavily among enterprise accounts, grew rapidly in April, jumping 17 percent to 294,594 servers.
Netcraft unearthed 20 servers running the brand new Apache 2.0.14, the beta version of the Web server released in March. Most of those servers were running at apache.org.
Netcraft also mused about whether proprietary Unix is dying. "The life-signs of proprietary Unix brands, other than Solaris, are not good in our Web Server Survey," Netcraft noted. The most current case in point, Compaq reverting to Windows 2000/Internet Information Services 5.0 after using its own Compaq Tru64 Unix from August 2000 to February 2001. –
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.