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Linux-Based Web Servers

Web servers are the workhorses of your Internet presence. Whether they're redirecting requests to application servers, serving up static or dynamic content, or sitting behind a load-balancer, these servers are your points of presence on the Web. If you're looking at building your infrastructure on a Linux platform, the choices that were once very limited are now opening up. Vendors are providing Linux-based solutions at a frantic pace, so you can afford to be more choosy.

A corporate-class Web server isn't all about performance, though that certainly is one of the deciding factors. We tested five Linux-based Web servers and rated them on configuration and management, performance, protocol support, price, and support of development languages. A solution from iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions, a Sun-Netscape Alliance, took home the prize. The iPlanet Web Server, Enterprise Edition 6.0 showed astounding configuration and management features paired with impressive performance. With SNMP support and the implementation of a complete J2EE container, as well as goodies such as bandwidth management and clustering support, this Web server climbed straight to the top of the heap.

Zeus Technology's Zeus Web Server showed blazing speed and an attractive management interface, as well as support for ISAPI, NSAPI and clustering, and came in a close second. Roxen Internet Software's Roxen WebServer 2.1, IBM's HTTP Server and Red Hat's C2Net Stronghold 3.0 all sport some strong features, but none had enough muscle to knock iPlanet out of the top spot.