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Alpha Test Drive
In our Real-World Labs® at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I took an early alpha release for a test run on a Red Hat Certified Compaq ProLiant 1850R using Red Hat Linux 6.1. As expected (though perhaps a surprise for those unfamiliar with Linux), the install script went flawlessly. Any Linux distribution with kernel 2.2.12 or later and glibc-2.1.2 or later can run iPlanet Web Server. I chose Red Hat for these tests because of Network Computing's use of the Red Hat Certified Compaq ProLiant 1850R. Although my out-of-the-box Red Hat install had Apache Web Server up and running, I was able to shut down Apache and continue the iPlanet Web Server installation with no problems and without interrupting the install script.

I was somewhat dismayed to have to set up the startup scripts myself, but I expect that more convenience features will be present in future beta and production releases.

Also a little disappointing was the fact that the startconsole script assumed I wanted to use Netscape Communications Corp.'s Netscape Navigator in an X Window environment, even though I preferred and actually did use Lynx in a shell to access the administration server on Port 8888.

Much like its earlier brethren (see "The Best Bets for Web Development" at www.networkcomputing.com/1020/1020f1. html, for more on our recent tests of enterprise Web servers), iPlanet Web Server is most certainly not short on Java support.

Out of the box, iPlanet Web Server supports JavaServer Pages 1.1PR1 (and is backward-compatible with JSP 1.0), servlets (with API-level support for 2.2 PR1), native JVM (Java Virtual Machine in Java Development Kit 1.2), LiveWire (server-side JavaScript) with JavaScript 1.4, and LiveConnect 3, which uses native JVMs instead of the Netscape JVM. One particularly appealing feature is the ability to use < servlet > tags in SHTML (server-side include HTML) files.

During my tests, I conjured up the servlet used in our aforementioned Web server roundup and referenced it using the < servlet > tag in an SHTML file without a problem. Web developers with existing SHTML content will be able to quickly augment it with Java-based servlets. Although such a wide area of supported Java technologies can be confusing, it does help make iPlanet Web Server a feasible alternative to the Apache and JServ projects for the Linux platform.

An Early Start
During my Web benchmark tests, iPlanet Web Server performance was up to snuff with that of HTTP 1.0 clients, but it did have numerous problems with HTTP 1.1 transactions. I was unable to secure a bug fix or a new build in time for this story. However, representatives for the Netscape-Sun Alliance attribute this bug to early alpha, or "pre-alpha," release, and I concur.

Further investigation by Netscape's core development team revealed a bug in the chunk-encoding layer of the HTTP 1.1 engine. Chunk encoding is used to send dynamic content in multiple parts, still allowing the server to know it has received all the dynamic content (see RFC 2068).

The earlier-than-usual release of iPlanet Web Server for Linux will most certainly benefit from the now-famous Linux user community and yield a better, more stable product in the end.

IPlanet Web Server also includes numerous security features not present in the de facto Linux Web server, Apache, including SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) support and various nonexportable-grade encryption algorithms. PKCS #11 support allows for nonexport-grade encryption using various third-party accelerator hardware and DES/3DES with 56/ 168-bit encryption and SHA message authentication.

Note, though, that the open source nature of the Apache project is the most likely reason for these features being absent.

Veterans of Netscape-Sun Alliance products will recognize the iPlanet Web Server interface, as it is practically unchanged from previous iterations. Representatives for the Sun-Netscape Alliance claim that the latest release has improved performance for SHTML, NSAPI (Netscape Server API), Java servlets and SSL. However, given the extremely early alpha release I tested, I was unable to reasonably quantify these claims with our existing iPlanet benchmarks.

Send your comments on this article to Gregory Yerxa at gyerxa@nwc.com.