Network Computingwww.networkcomputing.com

Netscape Communications Corp. Enterprise Server 4.0 (iPlanet Enterprise Server)
Of the three Web servers we tested, Netscape Enterprise Server 4.0 is the easiest to use, manage and configure. With its support for Solaris and Windows NT, this solution will work with most enterprise-class hardware available today. And it's stable, too: We never had to reboot and never experienced a system failure on our Windows NT or Solaris systems. In fact, our only problems could be attributed to an early beta installer that still had a few kinks. The Enterprise Server's performance stayed on par with Internet Information Server (IIS) for the Intel platform, and consistently outdid Apache Server in our dynamic tests. In light of its broad platform support and superior reliability, Web administrators should turn to Netscape Enterprise Server 4.0 first.

Our initial task on both the Intel and SPARC platforms was to make the necessary configuration changes to begin performance testing. We opened a text editor and executed numerous configuration changes in magnus.conf, the main configuration file. During a quick visit back to the WUI (Web user interface) to verify our revisions, Enterprise Server recognized the changes we had made manually and prompted us to load them. When we gave the go-ahead to Enterprise Server to load the modified configuration files, it restarted the server as well. Unlike our tuning experience with IIS, we never needed to reboot the machine during any of our Netscape configuration changes.

To gauge the amount of downtime during a software server restart, we ran our static 1-Kbps-to-20-Kbps agenda with 82 clients and restarted Enterprise Server midtest. Despite the heavy client load, only 25 to 30 clients reported a problem with their connections. Apache Server often fared similarly, as did IIS--though IIS often required a full system boot.

Netscape Enterprise Server is manageable from both the command prompt and its newly re-engineered Web interface, which is much easier to navigate than IIS's WUI (though IIS's management console interface makes up the difference). The Enterprise Server interface can be easily managed from Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) or Netscape Navigator, as opposed to IIS, which is noticeably slower with Navigator and should be accessed from IE. With Enterprise Server, information is easily viewed and modified. As we poked around the Web interface, we began to appreciate the context-sensitive online help, accessible through buttons on every page of the Server Manager WUI. Detailed documentation referred us to other appropriate online materials or PDF manuals.

Netscape ships and installs its own JRE (Java Runtime Environment). Although JRE is all you need for Java Servlet support, Web administrators need to download the latest Java Development Kit for Java Server Page support. We downloaded and installed the latest JDK from Sun (1.2.1.03), reran our servlet performance test and achieved the same results as with the default JRE.

During our performance testing, we ran into some anomalies concerning Enterprise Server's servlet functionality. Although the CGI test consumed all available CPU clock cycles, the servlet test did not. Regardless of the configuration (single, dual or quad), we encountered the same limit. We also experienced HTTP errors at the onset of most scripts on the Intel platform. This is most likely attributable to the sudden increase in HTTP traffic, though Apache Server, IIS and Netscape Enterprise Server on Solaris did not have this problem.

Netscape Enterprise Server 4.0 (iPlanet Enterprise Server), $1,495 per CPU, Sun-Netscape Alliance, (888) 786-8111, (650) 254-1900; fax (650) 528-4124. www.iplanet.com