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Apache Now Runs On Over 5 Million Sites

Posted by jimjag on from the developed-in-a-secret-underground-layer dept.

According to the December Netcraft survey, Apache can now be found running on over 5 million sites. Overall, Apache's "market share" dropped about a third of a percent, with the biggest change being a 0.77% increase by Zeus mostly due to its use by UUNet.

1 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Add many grains of salt to Netcraft numbers by Fudge.Org · · Score: 5
    I make my living running many different kinds of web servers. They all have their cool and sucky sides respectively. However, at 3am after a bad day I don't usually get called about Apache issues... ;)

    So, if you took the time to notice the small blurb below the fancy graphic:

    "Reports are provided showing server usage for the Internet as a whole, and for selected domains, with links to all the sites responding to the survey. A facility for you to check what server a particular site is running now is also available. The same form can be used to ensure that a particular site is included in future surveys. A directory of sites running in developer domains is also provided, while the sites discovered by the survey can be explored."

    So to be included you merely have to test a site you are curious about at some point.

    What this says to me is that I can put in any number of IP addresses that are bound to a hosting server. If they are doing checks on this alone they would get different points on the graph. However, the problem with that is that a massive virtual hosting operation could really skew the number.

    Netcraft even realizes this and states it clearly on the Mechanics page.

    Now, the same is true of IIS4 which just makes me think that the number isn't completely representative and that the sample has potential for being flawed.

    There are several caveats when looking at compiled data like this in a simplified graphic.

    So, before you shoot off at the mouth to your MIS director make sure you can qualify the data you present. Make no mistake that MS has some idea of how many NT4 installs took place with IIS4 counting as running as a service whether or not the people running it know about it. There are many many places with the MS equivilent of the Apache successful install home page. *grin*

    Just remember that joe business owners internal intranet IIS4 box with some canned application isn't going to show up on this kind of study. And internal MIS projects that go bump in the night won't either. How many users would really notice if you mapped let .asp be a known extension for perl cgi's? *grin*
    http://www.mp3.com/fudge/

    --
    http://fudge.org