[luau] NEWS: April 2002 Netcraft Web Server Survey
Warren Togami
warren at togami.com
Wed May 1 00:09:47 PDT 2002
April Netcraft survey results are released, with Apache making some gains at
the expense of Microsoft IIS. If you haven't already added your Apache web
server to their list, please do so in order to help the Apache count.
Search by your domain name at http://uptime.netcraft.com/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Prettejohn" <mhp at netcraft.com>
To: <warren at togami.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 7:05 PM
Subject: April 2002 Netcraft Web Server Survey
The April 2002 Netcraft Web Server Survey is out;
http://www.netcraft.com/survey/
Top Developers
Developer March 2002 Percent April 2002 Percent Change
Apache 20492088 53.76 21191595 56.38 2.62
Microsoft 12968860 34.02 12014054 31.96 -2.06
Zeus 855103 2.24 850956 2.26 0.02
iPlanet 889857 2.33 832474 2.21 -0.12
Active Sites
Developer March 2002 Percent April 2002 Percent Change
Apache 9522954 64.37 10509138 64.38 0.01
Microsoft 3966743 26.81 4431875 27.15 0.34
iPlanet 265826 1.80 278775 1.71 -0.09
Zeus 170023 1.15 182918 1.12 -0.03
Around the Net
Microsoft drop back a couple of percentage points this month,
primarily attributable to the reaping of around a million expired
sites at [1]homestead.com. Homestead used to offer limited free
hosting supported by advertising, but has revised its business model,
announcing on April 15th that it is migrating to a traditional paid-for
services model.
ZDNet's analysis
It has been interesting to watch ZDNet's respected columnist Larry
Seltzer [2]conjecture on the recent rise of Microsoft-IIS in the Web
Server Survey. It is a complicated picture as there seem to be several
forces at work, not all pulling in the same direction;
* Some of the big moves are because Microsoft has been able to
identy people who control very large numbers of sites, are not
bound tightly to a particular technology, and persuade them to
switch to Microsoft servers. The leading domain registrars,
Verisign and register.com, are prime examples of this.
It would be wrong to infer a trend from this because there are
only a few very large domain registrars, and once they have
switched, there is limited further potential. However,
Microsoft-IIS share could jump again if Microsoft can convinice
another class of entity that controls a large number of Web sites
to migrate to Windows. For example, the pioneer shared hosting
systems such as [10]Pair Networks, [11]Alabanza, [12]Rapidsite,
[now part of Verio] who control significant numbers of sites, and
presently seem happily entrenched using the technology that they
originally set their businesses up with in the early days of the
Web. Shared hosting has traditionally been a Unix preserve, but as
the table shows, hosters led by Interland have been able to host
significant numbers of sites on Windows 2000.
Top Windows 2000 Hosters by ip address, April 2002
Hosting Company IP Addresses
[3]interland.net 67,893
[4]softcomca.com 30,565
[5]sprintlink.net 23,626
[6]verio.net 16,730
[7]uu.net 15,378
[8]datapipe.net 9,046
[9]crystaltech.com 8,396
* The evaporation of the free hosting business model has caused
volatility in survey numbers over the last eighteen months, as
large numbers of small sites appeared on free hosting systems and
subsequently disappeared as companies revised their business model
or went out of business.
* There has been a technology shift in Microsoft's favour over the
last three years, as the dedicated server phenomenon has
progressed from being innovative and exciting to commonplace and
conventional. Microsoft has benefitted as the decision on choice
of hosting technology has moved to individual site owners from the
managers of large hosting systems. Intel machines running either
Linux or Windows have become the de facto platforms for dedicated
server based sites, and almost without exception hosting companies
offer their customers both. For example, [13]Rackspace, who
received venture funding funding from Red Hat, have become a
significant provider of Windows dedicated servers.
* Also, Microsoft does have an area of the market where there is no
natural Unix based competitor - mid-market commerce sites.
Commerce Server [nee Site Server] has traditionally dominated in
this market, and this month Microsoft has [14]announced a .Net
enabled version, Commerce Server 2002.
* Conversely, the success of Miva and PHP has supported Linux
adoption on commerce sites far more effectively than was the case
two years ago.
Apache 2.0 released
At the start of the month, Apache 2.0 was [15]released. Most of the
emphasis for the immediate release has come from [16]Covalent, who
released an Apache/2.0 product some five months [17]earlier. The other
leading commercial lights in the Apache community [18]Red Hat and
[19]IBM have adopted a much more conservative approach to Apache 2.0,
and are still running their own sites on Apache/1.3. Indeed, Red Hat's
[20]Stronghold 4 which was released after the Covalent product, is
based on Apache/1.3.
So far, there has not been a largescale move to Apache/2.0, though
several high profile sites, including [21]News.com and
[22]slashdot.org have started using it.
VeriSign investors see money go up in smoke
Mark Shuttleworth, possibly the survey's wealthiest subscriber, who
netted half a billion dollars from the sale of his certificate
authority, Thawte Consulting to Verisign in December 1999, was
successfully [23]launched into space on Thursday. He took off from
Baikonur aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and docked with the
International Space Station early on Saturday 27th April.
Ironically, just as Mark was hitting new heights on Friday, Verisign
was hitting new [24]lows as investors apparently followed the smart
money, out of domain registration and into the Russian space tourism
industry.
SSL Encryption : weak ciphers being eliminated
Last [25]month we drew attention to a paper nCipher had published a
paper on their success in cracking 512-bit RSA public keys and the
deployment of these keys on the internet.
This has prompted us to take a look at the strength of the symmetric
ciphers which are used during the actual transfer of data.
Although many SSL servers will offer weak ciphers as an option,
typically for compatibility with older web browsers, those servers
that offer exclusively weak ciphers compromise the privacy of the
encrypted data.
Looking at data collected since the [26]SSL survey first started in
1996 serves to illustrate the progress being made in eliminating
servers that do not support strong encryption.
Not only has the percentage of servers internet-wide offering
exclusively weak ciphers fallen from around 40% in December 1997, to
below 6% in the April 2002 survey, but also in absolute numbers from
25,000 a year ago, to 9,595 now.
Many of the servers offering exclusively weak ciphers were hosted
outside of the United States, with France and Taiwan offering the
poorest protection of encrypted data.
Two hosters highlight profitability
Two dedicated servers companies, both based in Texas and with similar
sounding names, have highlighted their profitability in a largely
unprofitable industry. [27]Rackspace recently [28]announced a year of
continuous profitability. [29]Everyones Internet, owner of dedicated
hoster [30]Rackshack [31]announced a fifth consecutive quarter of
growth in revenue and net income.
The two companies are finding success with two different messages.
Rackspace highlights its "Fanatical support", while Rackshack
terrifies its competitors with frigteningly low prices. However both
companies have [32]dropped Cobalt from their offerings, in common with
several other leading hosting industry companies, including
[33]Dialtone Internet. Rackshack's decision comes relatively shortly
after it made the [34]largest ever single purchase of Cobalt machines
in December 2001.
References
1. http://www.homestead.com/
2.
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2862549,00.html
3. http://www.interland.net/
4. http://www.softcomca.com/
5. http://www.sprintlink.net/
6. http://www.verio.net/
7. http://www.uu.net/
8. http://www.datapipe.net/
9. http://www.crystaltech.com/
10. http://www.pair.com/
11. http://www.alabanza.com/
12. http://www.rapidsite.com/
13. http://www.rackspace.com/
14. http://news.com.com/2100-1017-876955.html
15. http://news.com.com/2100-1001-878325.html
16. http://www.covalent.net/
17. http://news.com.com/2100-1001-275672.html
18. http://www.netcraft.com/whats?site=www.redhat.com
19. http://www.netcraft.com/whats?site=www.ibm.com
20. http://www.redhat.com/about/presscenter/2002/press_stronghold.html
21. http://www.netcraft.com/whats?site=www.news.com
22. http://www.netcraft.com/whats?site=images.slashdot.com
23. http://www.africaninspace.com/
24.
http://mwprices.ft.com/custom/ft-com/interactivecharting.asp?FTSite=FTCOM&sy
mb=verisign&countrycode=US
25. http://www.netcraft.com/Survey/index-200203.html
26. http://www.netcraft.com/ssl/
27. http://www.rackspace.com/
28. http://www.rackspace.com/promo/oneyear.php
29. http://www.ev1.net/
30. http://www.rackshack.net/
31. http://thewhir.com/marketwatch/rac041002.cfm
32. http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s%253D701%2526a%253D25274,00.asp
33. http://www.dialtone.com/
34. http://www.rackshack.net/aboutus/intro.asp
More information about the LUAU
mailing list