New 'Beaver' web server has exactly ONE user outside China Netcraft's monthly survey of web-facing computers has turned up an oddity: a new web server called “Beaver” that's used by exactly one web site outside China. “Just over a million sites now exhibit the Beaver Server header, and these make use of more than 110,000 unique domain names – mostly under the .cn top-level domain,” …
"The server remains the second-most-used code on active sites with 20.22 per cent share, rather behind Apache's 45.16 per cent. Microsoft's IIS has 7.83 per cent share, a sliver ahead of Google's 7.10 per cent. ®"
Whilst on total internet facing websites (the figure that was always quoted when it made Apache look good) IIS is now way ahead with 49% market share versus Apache on 21%, nginx on 13%, and Google on 1%
"So IIS seems to be "Most domain parking websites""
Amusingly though this was indeed always the number quoted for Apache market share for many years. It's only now that IIS has overwhelmingly taken the lead that we seem to be cherry picking more restrictive numbers. Guess those LAMP fans are a bit touchy after all the high profile hacked sites recently!
So are you saying that IIS is fine for hobbyists, but when real work needs to be done, real professionals use Apache or Nginx? That's what your argument amounts to.
Many, many, registered domain names don't exist as real web sites. Instead, domain name speculators ("domain squatters") buy them and hold onto them, hoping to sell a "valuable" name to a real business at a huge mark-up. These names don't need a real associated web site since they won't receive any traffic unless someone types a domain name into their browser incorrectly. They can just exist as a database entry in an old server that serves up a default template with some ads and a "this domain name for sale" page.
There were reports a number of years ago that Microsoft was occasionally paying domain name registrars to put these unused sites on IIS as a marketing wheeze. There wasn't a lot of money involved, but it's not an expensive service to run. Hence, this is why "all sites" numbers go up and down like a roller coaster, while "active sites" and "top million sites" numbers changed relatively slowly and in line with well known industry trends. The "active sites" has just one "bump", which I believe is from when Netcraft had to start accounting for this phenomenon by testing if a site is a "real" site.
This is why the "all sites" numbers are meaningless. They don't have any correlation to how many web servers or real web sites actually exist. Compare the "active sites" numbers to the "top million sites" numbers though, and the relative rankings are the same, and the market share numbers are roughly in line (although "top million" trends tend to lag "active" obviously, as the biggest sites have generally been around for a while).
If you're a server administrator or web developer and want to know what new skills you ought to be working on, then the "active sites" numbers will tell you what you should be paying attention to if you want to address the widest real market.
I don't trust them. Are they quoting stats based on application level or are they including all of the nginx transparent proxies in all of this?
All my .NET clients utilise nginx reverse proxies as gateway servers to protect their IIS application serversa and tonload balance.
Also, I tend to find that nginx and apache based webapps generally require less servers overall because of the way the servers and applications can work. Whereas IIS and .NET based stuff temds to have a heftier server requirement because of how slow .NET is / can be (especially for APIs).
One of my larger clients is a .NET based gambling firm they have 8 .NET app servers behind 2 nginx proxies for example. Not including the session state box (which also requires IIS).
I suspect most of the stats that suggest IIS is more popular are actually highlighting how naff IIS is.
I think the Dot Net or IIS sites that are on the Internet tend to be mainly older systems. It's pretty rare to hear of a new large scale application using either. Yes there are a few existing successful ones, but they tend to be ones that were built back when IIS and Dot Net were considered to be serious major competitors in the Internet market (I think remembering that makes me sound old).
The mainstay for Dot Net and IIS these days tends to be legacy business applications that run on internal company networks out of public view. Dot Net and IIS are the new COBOL and mainframe.
"I think the Dot Net or IIS sites that are on the Internet tend to be mainly older systems"
You think incorrectly. IIS has been growing market share for a while now. There are plenty of reasons - it has a far better security record than LAMP stacks - we endlessly read about those getting hacked and user accounts dumped, IIS is also very easy to scale and automate - and features like it's centralised certificate management for handling thousands of certs make it popular low TCO choice for large web hosters - and people are using it on large sites too - 10% of the top 1 million busiest sites now run IIS as per Netcraft.
There's nothing inherently wrong with IIS. It's a popular choice particularly for smaller companies who simply don't want to shell out on someone who can roll Apache when they already have dedicated admins who know quite enough to configure IIS. If you're some 20-employee workshop or database firm or plumbing supply stockist or pizza shop, then you probably already have all the expertise you need to create and host your own IIS website, whereas using Apache would be a whole new learning curve.
And that's a perfectly honest niche, there's nothing wrong with those sites. They're not going to rival Twitter or Amazon anytime soon, but as a shop window for the business, they're fine.
I really don't know about platforms for new serious commercial or interactive sites. Maybe IIS is holding its own in those markets, maybe not. I suspect not, just because if someone is putting that level of investment into a website, they're likely to budget for a real professional to manage the hosting.
"Wait a minute, the beaver is Canada's national animal. ... Why didn't the Chinese use their own?"
Well, you kind of backed the Politburo into a corner, there. Notwithstanding the cognitive dissonance of a greedy neocapitalist kleptocracy being run by a "communist" government, those lovely billions of dollars of trade sweated from factory slaves still don't entirely disguise the fact that this is as vicious and intolerant an authoritarian government as ever was. They couldn't use the national animal they are best known for, and "Murdered Dissident" really doesn't have much of a ring as the monicker for a web server.
Besides, no one would be sure if it originated in China or Russia.
I did a quick search for information about the "Beaver" web server, and can't find anything other than the Register article. The Netcraft article isn't much more informative. So, what is it?
Given the information in the article, I would speculate that it's a drop-in replacement for IIS for running some types of existing applications in a manner which is advantageous to a hosting provider. It's hard to think of any other reason for a hosting provider to have this.
"I would speculate that it's a drop-in replacement for IIS for running some types of existing applications in a manner which is advantageous to a hosting provider. It's hard to think of any other reason for a hosting provider to have this."
Or advantageous to the Chinese government. Maybe it's part of the "special" Win10 for China and includes all of the MS data slurp stuff but directed to Government slurping?
New Chinese web server type found. Called Beaver.
Beavers - Canada's national animal, are world wide distribution with several species.
Known for building dams, chewing down trees and making their homes in the middle of the pond, using an underwater entrance.
Chinese beaver servers.
Perhaps we're seeing an upgrade to the Great Firewall of china while they cut down all the tunnels that the chinese have wrangled? and the upper execs in Chinese government hide in the safety of the underwater headquarters of doom?
<pure speculation on my part of course, chasing down 8 coincident hardware failures that management have blamed on thermal>
That sarvar OBVIOUSSLY BELOMGS TO CLIMTON and WAS USED DURING HER ELCTIN CAMOANE against TRUUMO. Wwhats SHE got too HIDE RHEN? The PEOPLEM ofmAMERICA ASKED THAT QUESRIIN and THATS WHYBRHYE VOTED FOR TRUMO and his GoOd lady METALLICA. IF you look right in CLINTONS BEAVER server then your hands will BE AS DIRTY AS HERS! There's a saying IN MY TIWN: ""IF YER heads in the BUSH Chexk where YOUR BUTT ISNFACING. ""
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
