download

Network Services—Internet ServersAs the example configuration suggests, this virtual host configuration will catchall the requests for www.example.org (note the ServerName directive) and alsoexample.com (note the ServerAlias directive, and you can define as many aliasnames as necessary), from incoming http request headers. Moreover, it servesweb pages from /usr/local/www/example.com directory for these requests. TheErrorLog and CustomLog directives specify the error log file and the access log filerespectively. The email address specified in front of the ServerAdmin directive willalso be shown under the error messages.Alternative HTTP ServersWhile Apache HTTPD server is very popular and widely used, you may want touse other lighter and faster alternatives instead. The reason you may want to choosean alternative to apache web server, is the fact that apache is complex and loadedwith different modules and features that would slow things down. Luckily, thereare plenty of alternative HTTP servers available via FreeBSD's ports tree that wouldsuite your needs better than the apache web server.The lighttpd (www/lighttpd under ports directory) server is a lightweightand fast HTTP server. Compared to Apache, it uses much less system resources.The lighttpd server is designed with performance in mind, avoiding Apache'sperformance bottlenecks and pre-fork model.It runs as a multi-threaded single process and can serve thousands of sessionssimultaneously with minimum processor and memory usage.Another alternative web server is nginx (available in ports tree as www/nignx).Besides being a high performance and lightweight web server, nignx is also aHTTP and email reverse-proxy server. Just as lighttpd, nignx also serves staticcontent, very fast.ProxyA web proxy server is a gateway that receives HTTP requests from the hosts andforwards the request to the destination (perhaps some host on Internet), and relaysthe answer back to the original requester. HTTP Proxy servers are mostly used asInternet access gateways to bring web access to the users in a campus LAN, whilehaving the ability to control, restrict, and cache the requests.A very well-known and popular HTTP proxy software is the open-source Squidproject. Squid offers high performance web proxy function as well as content caching,in order to improve the web browsing experience. It can also be used to enforcerestriction policies, such as time restriction, bandwidth control, and content filtering.[ 230 ]