Server Software

If you have a network of computers in your workplace, then you surely must have a server moderating these computers. A server is actually a piece of software, or the computer that has that software, that supplies a particular kind of service to client software that is running on that same computer. The client software can also be running on the other computers connected in the network. The server is actually the application that receives connections to process requests through the act of sending back replies to the requests. And because of this, it is very important for the network to have server software. There are actually many kinds of server software, depending on the purpose the server you need would serve. Here is a rundown of the different server software you just might come across.

First off is web server software. A web server is actually a computer program that is primarily used to accept HTTP requests from clients. These are actually termed as web browsers. By the acceptance of the HTTP requests comes the sending of HTTP responses. These responses can come with data content, usually in the form of web pages, HTML documents, images, and linked objects. A web server also has logging capabilities, which allows the collection of information about the requests made by clients, as well as the responses sent to the clients. The typical web server would have what are called log analyzers. These analyzers obtain statistics based on the log information that they have collected.

Another type of server software is proxy server software. This is actually an application that is primarily used to serve the requests of clients by sending these requests to other servers that it is affiliated with. So, how does it work? A client establishes a connection with the proxy server and requests for a particular service. This could be in the form of a file or a connection, for instance. And this service is available on a different server. The proxy then acts as the middleman, attempting to establish a connection between itself and the requested server. The proxy server then asks for needed service in place of the client. Due to this action, a proxy server is sometimes known as a gateway.

And then there’s email server software. Mail server software is actually known as MTA as well, or mail transfer agent. The primary purpose of this server is to facilitate the transfer of email messages from a particular computer to another. A mail delivery agent is actually needed to deliver a particular email to a user’s inbox or mailbox. When asked via surveys, people are quite picky when it comes to the mail server software they use. The popular ones are Microsoft Exchange Server, Kerio MailServer, Postfix, Sendmail, and Exim.

Another server that most people, if not all, have heard of by now is the FTP server or the File Transfer Protocol server. FTP server software is used by computers that belong in a network. This is the server that is used by one computer in transferring any form of data to another computer in the network. FTP servers are also used in transferring data over the Internet from one computer to another. There are actually two computers concerned when an FTP transfer is made. These are the server and the client. It is the FTP server that is just looming over the network, detecting connection requests from the other computers. It is the FTP client that requests for a connection to the server.

These are just some of the server software that is commonly used by people worldwide. There are other kinds as well. Even those network games played by children are also in need of game servers. Thus, it is very important to understand the basics of server software.