A Review of Internet Technology Part 3: The Web Server

Web Servers can range from your laptop computer to a super computer housed in a giant data center in the middle of the dessert.  The biggest trend I am seeing in terms of web servers is that they are becoming increasingly more open and accessible to the masses.  I am first going to discuss how this trend can be seen at the micro level with personal and business server usage and at the macro level with DNS (Domain Name Systems).

Traditionally one would setup local servers to host their business or personal applications.  Ten years ago this was the only option for many unless you could afford your own private data center.  With advancements in hardware and internet infrastructure the use of servers is seeing a shift from local based servers to remote servers i.e. the cloud.  Businesses no longer need to spend money on purchasing local servers and staffing tech support to maintain them.  Options like Amazon Web Services now allow a business to setup managed servers anytime they need them and have the option to only be charged for the time that they are being used.

Servers are used for more than just hosting and running applications.  One very important type of server is a DNS server.  DNS servers have been around since the early days of the web and have helped it to become a decentralized network.  Rather than touch on the technical aspects of DNS I will simply say they are the routers/phone book for the internet.  In the past there were a very limited number of these DNS 'routers'.  They of course did their job, but it raises the question of who is in control.  Sometimes those in Washington and governments abroad try to limit the openness of the internet, passing laws to build 'great firewalls' and controlling what content citizens can see and not see.  Thankfully no one country controls DNS servers.  Every country has begun to take its own slice of the DNS pie which is further decentralizing traffic on the internet.  Now no one country or group of countries can turn off the internet by disabling DNS servers. While there are only 13 root name servers.  Duplicates of those servers appear all around the world and is now at around 100 instances as seen in the map below.