If you've been lurking in the various forums and newsgroups
devoted to webmastering, you could hardly fail to notice the
heated debate going on at this time. No, it's not which is the
best browser. This debate is about web servers. More precisely,
which one is better: Apache or Internet Information Server
(IIS).
To tell you the truth, I've used them both (and a few others as
well) and the simple plain truth of the matter is these two web
server platforms are really functionally equivalent.
IIS is much easier for the novice as operators can maintain it
from easy-to-use screens and forms. Windows 2000, on the other
hand, costs a lot more than other operating systems such as
Linux, FreeBSD and Unix.
Straight Apache requires a huge learning curve to learn how to
operate and administer. Everything is configured in extremely
obscure text files, and these configurations are done by hand
(although you can purchase add-on utilities to enable entry of
much of this information from screens and forms.)
The security model of IIS is one of the best ever designed,
based as it is upon NTFS (the security model of Windows NT and
Windows 2000). This model is far superior to the anything
provided with Apache for non-Windows systems. Of course, on
Windows, Apache can use NTFS as well.
Of course, IIS has been plagued with a number of vulnerabilities
lately, and these are a concern. It's common to patch IIS at
least monthly, and to install a new service release (a
collection of patches) twice a year. Most of the bugs were
worked out of Apache (prior to version 2) long ago. Of course,
with the release of version two of Apache you can expect a
number of security and other flaws to surface - these are a
normal part of a product's life cycle.
Richard Lowe Jr.
http://www.internet-tips.net... Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets at http://www.internet-tips.net - Visit our website any time to read over 1,000 complete FREE articles about how to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.