Copyright ©1996, Que Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without prior written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Making copies of any part of this book for any purpose other than your own personal use is a violation of United States copyright laws. For information, address Que Corporation, 201 West 103^rd Street, Indianapolis, IN 46290 or at support@mcp.com.

Notice: This material is excerpted from Running A Perfect Web Site with Apache, ISBN: 0-7897-0745-4. The electronic version of this material has not been through the final proof reading stage that the book goes through before being published in printed form. Some errors may exist here that are corrected before the book is published. This material is provided "as is" without any warranty of any kind.

Chapter 03 - Setting Up a Presence on the World Wide Web

This chapter discusses the first steps you need to take to create a presence on the Web: getting the connection to the Internet itself, and selecting a system to host your presence. You can follow two basic paths to put your site on the Internet: the first part of this chapter discusses the benefits and costs of each. The second part of the chapter discusses the choices you'll need to make when building the Web server itself. Even if you're setting up an internal Web server with no connection to the Internet, take a look through the section about building the perfect Web server.

Setting up an Internet Web server can be quite a complex undertaking, and the detailed knowledge required would fill far more than just a single book. This chapter describes important parts of the process and outlines the choices you need to make.

In this chapter, you learn:

• The advantages and disadvantages of hosting your own site or leasing space from a provider
• What kind of Internet connections are available and the hardware they require
• How to select the operating system and hardware for your Web server

Establishing a Presence

There are two basic ways to create a presence on the Web - hosting the site on an Internet service provider's machine or somewhere outside your machine, or hosting it on your own machine and managing the bandwidth and hardware/software issues yourself. Each method has its own benefits and costs; the method you choose depends on your needs.

Key Considerations

Putting information on the Web requires HTTP server software (as provided on the CD accompanying this book) and a system to host that information. The first choice you need to make is whether to support that system yourself - including tending the hardware, configuring and monitoring the server, and installing all the information or services you want to provide to the world - or to lease Web space from your Internet provider and let your provider do all the nitty-gritty of running the server. It may sound like a simple choice - after all, why not just sit back and let someone else do all the dirty work? But actually, the choice is a little more complex. The main trade-offs you make when you decide whether to have your provider host your Web site or whether you host the site yourself are cost and control.

Reviewing and Comparing the Alternatives

When your provider hosts your Web site, the provider takes care of obtaining the hardware, maintaining the system, worrying about security, and may even be able to design and produce your Web pages. Depending on the complexity of your Web site, creating a Web site can be a considerable effort, especially if you need to integrate it with an existing network. Having your provider do all the work can certainly be very convenient. It can, however, also be costly, depending on the number of conveniences you require and the rates your provider charges for his services. There are really no standards when it comes to Web site hosting, so costs and services vary wildly. This isn't to say there aren't some really good groups out there doing commercial Web hosting services in a very professional manner, however. When you rely totally on the provider, aside from the content of the information you supply for the Web, you often have less control over your Web site. Your provider may not allow things such as access counters (the "you are visitor number so-and-so" that appears at the bottom of many Web pages) or other on-the-fly page customizations because of system concerns or capabilities. Your provider takes care of all the hardware, including a high-speed 24-hour-a-day connection to the Internet, but if your provider's system goes "off the air," there's nothing you can do about restoring your Web presence.

When you host your own Web site, you have total control over all aspects of your site; its features, its services, its hours of operation. You also have total responsibility for its operation (or lack thereof if you run into problems). The highest costs are in setting up the server and the network connection; once the server is up and running, all you'll need to pay will be your Internet connection charge and whatever fees are involved in making the physical connection between your system and the Internet. Your initial cost can be very low - after all, your most crucial software, including the Web server itself, is included on the CD-ROM with this book - or quite high, if you have complex security requirements.

There are a few other factors to consider. If you already have a full-time Internet connection for other purposes (such as FTP or e-mail), you should host your own Web site - most of the hard work of integrating the Internet and your internal network will already have been done. If your needs are very simple - for example, if you just want to host a few pages, want to run the Web server only for limited hours, or if you don't want to connect your Web server to an internal network - you're also a good candidate for your own Web site. Once you have a connection established, setting up the Web server itself is simple.

Finally, you need to consider what kind of information your server might gather as well as what kind it will distribute. If you want to collect sensitive or confidential information (for example, credit card numbers or customer names and addresses), your provider must support secure Web transactions. More importantly, you must be able to trust your provider to keep your confidential information secret. If you don't want to trust your provider with your secrets, you'll need to operate the secure server yourself, which is not a small undertaking.

Here's a summary of the advantages and disadvantages to hosting your own Web site.

There are a couple happy media between having your provider do all the work at his own server and setting up a Web site by yourself. Some providers (or other specialists) can assist in the initial setup of the server, including designing Web pages. You can then take over server operations. Alternately, some Internet access providers will let you locate your machine at their machine room for a monthly fee, essentially giving you as much bandwidth as they themselves have without having to deliver that bandwidth to your door. You can still control everything on that server, hardware, and software, it's just sitting in a locked cage somewhere else. This is called server co-location.

The next few sections cover some of the details involved in getting the Internet connection. Leasing space from a provider is explained more fully, but the hardware you'll need to make the connection to the Internet yourself is described.

Leasing Space

Leasing space is a popular, easy way to get your presence on the Web quickly. The greatest appeal of leased space is that your provider gives you a high-speed Internet connection, all day, every day. However, your provider's charge for this service may be as much as, or more than, what it would cost you to provide a satisfactory Internet connection, but with the added flexibility that your own server provides.

Working with Leased Space

When you have a leased Web site, you either tell your provider how you want your pages set up, or you create them yourself and send them to your provider, most frequently via FTP.

As was mentioned earlier, a leased Web site can only provide those services that your provider allows. Will your provider allow you to use the forms and scripts you want to use to collect information or provide services? Some don't, for security reasons. Will your provider allow you to use programs (called server-side includes) or implement new content types like Java or VRML?

Finding a Provider

Finding a provider today is extremely simple, just by using the Internet itself. A search of the Yahoo Web site for "Internet Providers" yields a dizzying array of Internet access providers, Web page designers, and network specialty firms, in every locale and every price range. Some firms provide browser forms for price quotes, or just descriptions of services; others provide full pricing schedules.

H=htmL Authoring/Web Application Development

C=CGI Script Processing

S=WAIS or other search capabilities offered

P=Prebuilt applications

Speed=Speed of service provider's connection to the Internet

Area=Area code(s) served in part or in whole by local dial-up access. If no area code is listed, provider either offers national dial-up access or none at all.

Costs

The recent competition for Internet services, and the (relatively) low cost of the necessary technology, has lowered the prices and raised the quality of Internet service in general, but prices and services vary widely from provider to provider. For example, one provider offers a wide range of prices, from an extremely low rate for very small businesses (a little over $200 setup charge and around $30 per month) to a high rate for large, high-volume sites (almost $6,000 setup and nearly $2,000 per month). Some providers have fixed rates; others charge by the number of page accessed or by the amount of data the server transmits. Providers also have a range of "package deals" with varying degrees of flexibility and services, ranging from a simple "you upload it, we publish it" to page design and application programming.

It definitely pays to shop around for Internet services, even for simple personal access. A savings of even $20 per month adds up quickly. And don't be afraid to look outside your geographical area for low-cost services. Remember, it's the World Wide Web, and if you have local Internet access yourself, you can FTP your pages to a provider's server in another state as easily as you can to one across the street.

Concerns and Advantages

Leasing your presence on a provider's Web server provides an easy way to establish your presence on the Web, but one with many constraints and one that may not be cost-effective for your needs. If you don't want to hassle with network connections, server security, and system maintenance, and don't mind giving up control of your Web presence, this is definitely the way to go. If you already have the Internet connection, or can't find a provider package that suits your needs or your budget, consider running your own server.

Connecting Your Own Web Server

If you decide to host your own Internet server, you will need to provide your own Internet connection. Again, this is something that is best done by professionals, and a good Internet access provider will be able to do most of the dirty work for you. This section is intended to give you an overview of some of your choices.

All Internet connections have several costs, all of which add up alarmingly quickly:

• The hardware required to make the connection itself - ranging from a simple plug-in modem to multiple routers and other network connectivity devices
• The provider's setup cost (sometimes includes the service charge for installing equipment at your site, sometimes doesn't)
• The cost of the Internet service itself
• The price of the physical connection to the Internet - ranging from an ordinary phone line to special data lines

Of course, the faster and the more complex the connection, the more expensive it will be.

Connection Types: Switched versus Leased

There are two basic types of Internet connection: switched connections, which use some sort of intermediary technology between your system and the Internet, and leased lines, a direct network connection to the Internet itself.

Leased lines are the method of choice for anyone needing full-time high-speed connections. Leased lines are the fastest type of Internet connection - they are also the most expensive. Connecting a high-speed leased line to your system is probably the single-most complicated operation in the entire Web server setup process, and you will need to budget plenty of time and money to make that connection.

A slow leased line (56 kbps, about twice as fast as a standard 28.8 kbps modem) provides more than enough bandwidth for e-mail and news, but is not much faster than a regular home dial-up connection when transmitting heavy graphics.

The most common leased-line connection is a T1, which has a very respectable data rate of 1,544 kbps (more than 50 times faster than a 28.8 kbps modem). T1s provide enough bandwidth for dozens of Web servers, so several users can each use only a part of the T1, sharing the bandwidth as well as the cost. A full T1 connection costs between $1,000 and $3,000 per month, not including the cost of the leased line (which can be as much again as the Internet access charge). Many providers offer fractional T1 lines in 256 kbps increments. Even higher up the bandwidth food chain are T3 connections (also sometimes called OC3 connections), which are a very respectable 45 megabits per second speed. Typically, these are reserved for sites with very heavy loads - unless you are planning on being one of the top 50 Web sites in terms of traffic, this is probably overkill for you. T3 line and Internet access charges can be as high as $25,000 per month.

Leased lines can't just be plugged into a network card on the back of your computer; they require additional hardware, the most important being a router, a device that controls the flow of data between the Internet and your local network or system. Cost for routers (not always including installation and support) range from $1,000 to $4,000. Routers can be crucial components in your network security system, and the more protection your internal network requires, the more important your routers become.

Leased lines also require a Channel Service Unit/Data Service Unit (CSU/DSU or just CSU) installed between the leased line and the router. CSUs run from around $300 to around $3,000, depending on the speed you require. T3 DSU's and routers can run you well into $80,000 before you're done.

Leave a little "room to grow" when you purchase your router and CSU; you can often save upgrade costs later by spending a little more up front for higher speed equipment.

If you want to run a high-volume server with heavy graphics, you will probably need a leased line of some kind. However, in addition to these traditional solutions, there are several alternative technologies that you might explore if you don't require leased lines' ultra-high speeds (or can't afford leased lines' high costs).

Frame Relay

Frame relay is an interesting new technology that attempts to maximize the way systems use communications bandwidth. Here's an extremely simplified example of how frame relay works. Imagine a typical telephone conversation: at some point in the conversation, you pause a moment to collect your thoughts. While you're not speaking, the phone line is still dedicated to your conversation; while you're silent, your telephone is still sending data (it's just silent data, if you will).

In a frame relay system, while you were pausing to think, the system "loans" your phone line to another conversation, and restores your connection as soon as you began talking again. This way, the phone circuits can be kept busy, even while you're not using them. Now imagine that instead of waiting for a long pause in the conversation, the frame relay system was able to "borrow" the phone line between the sentences, even the words, of your conversation. By switching rapidly during the pauses between several conversations, the same phone line can carry several conversations at once, while maintaining the integrity of each conversation.

Frame Relay systems are fast and efficient, and can run between 56 kbps and 512 kbps (equivalent to about half a T1). Some of its proponents claim that frame relay can support speeds up to 50 Mbps, about the same speed as the Internet backbone itself.

For more information about frame relay technology, see the Frame Relay Forum's Web site at:
http://frame-relay.indiana.edu/

Hardware/Software

Frame relay is a cooperative system; not only do you need the appropriate frame relay access equipment, but your provider must be able to support the system. To use a frame relay system, you'll need a router and possibly other hardware. Some routers are frame-relay compliant, as are some network switches. You don't need any additional network software on your server machine besides your Windows network package.

Costs

Costs vary significantly, as do pricing schemes, ranging from fixed price for a particular amount of service, or a per-data-transmitted price. Initial costs can run to more than $5,000; the frame relay connection fee itself can vary from around $200 to $1,000, depending on the provider and the speed of the connection you select - and of course, there's also the cost of the physical frame relay line, which varies from region to region.

Concerns

Frame relay is becoming a stable and reliable alternative to leased-line technology. The major concern working with frame relay is whether your provider supports it, and whether you can support its cost.

ISDN

Unlike the other technologies discussed so far, ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) is a dial-up service. The technology has been around for years, but it is recently becoming popular, especially for users that need a high-speed on-demand Internet connection. ISDN service provides two channels, each of which can be used for voice or data. By combining both channels, it's possible to achieve a total data rate of 128 kbps (about four times faster than an ordinary 28.8 kbps modem).

Hardware/Software

ISDN requires a special ISDN modem, but not necessarily a special line; usually, an ordinary phone line will work. The ISDN modem replaces the ordinary modem, and plugs right into your system.

Costs

ISDN modems cost significantly less than router systems - you can get ISDN modems for between $200 and $300. There is a monthly charge for the ISDN service, and a charge per minute. Essentially, ISDN service is just an extremely expensive phone call, and is billed as such.

Concerns

ISDN is extremely cost-effective for brief, high-speed connections, but a poor choice for full-time Web servers. A 24-hour ISDN connection would run charges up quickly. At just $2 per hour, ISDN costs $48 per day, $336 per week, $1,344 per month - which turns out to be about as much as the initial set-up charge for some leased-line services. If you want to operate your server for just a few hours a day, ISDN may be a good idea - if you plan to keep the connection open longer than that, you should probably investigate a leased-line solution. ISDN is also not a universally offered service, even by the major providers.

Analog Modem

The analog modem is the workhorse of the typical Web user; fast, inexpensive analog modems have made the wide audience of the Web possible. And, yes indeed, you can run a Web server with just a basic analog modem - but at a price of performance.

Hardware/Software

Modems are extremely inexpensive for their capabilities. Prices being as low as they are, you should get the fastest modem you can: 28.8 kbps. Most UNIX operating systems these days have fairly robust dial-up access packages, Linux and BSDI probably providing the most stable packages.

Costs

Fast analog modems at this writing were available in the $200-300 range, some even down to $140. If you are selecting a modem for a Web server, don't pay extra for voice mail or fax capabilities - you won't be using them.

Given the popularity of the home and home-business Web server, some providers are beginning to offer 24-hour SLIP/PPP access, as low as $50-60 per month. A single dedicated phone line is usually very inexpensive, but you might want to speak to your phone company about whether a special rate is available for 24-hour calls.

Concerns

The single greatest concern of the modem-based server is speed. How many times have you sat watching the download counter on your personal Internet account, wishing that your 28.8 kbps modem was faster? You may be able to run a very simple text-only Web site over a 28.8 kbps modem, but if you intend to offer high graphics or multimedia-like image maps, an ordinary modem is just too slow.

Building the Perfect Server

If you're going to host your own Web site (whether on an internal network or on the Internet), you will need a system to run the server and to store whatever Web pages you want to provide. If you've done any computer shopping recently, you know that getting the "latest and greatest" can run up costs in a hurry. However, with careful shopping - and careful consideration of your needs, you can obtain a more-than-satisfactory system at a very reasonable price.

There are two main considerations in building a server system:

• How much traffic do you expect to support?
• Can your system grow as your needs grow?

The capacity of your system must be matched to the amount of traffic you expect to support. If you're running an Internet server, response to customer's requests is crucial; a slow server makes a poor impression. You must also look at your future needs, and select a path you can follow if you need to upgrade to a larger system.

So which platform and operating system should you buy? The answer to that question is so tinged with religion in the UNIX community that making a recommendation here would do nothing but alienate some fraction of readers, if not all of them. By and large there is really no operating system or platform that is a bad choice for a Web server, so your choice should be based on considerations like:

• What operating system do you currently use and enjoy?
• What other kinds of software do you want to run - commercial databases?
• What can you afford?

As mentioned earlier, the URL http://www.windows95.com/ is running on a Pentium with BSDI and handles 2 million hits a day without a problem. Anecdotal evidence from elsewhere suggests Sparc 2's capable of handling 500,000 hits/day without much problem either. You should choose whatever platform you are most comfortable on, that you know the most about and trust the most. Even Linux on a 386 runs more than one moderately busy Web server!

One of the biggest things that can skew the capacity of the server, though, is if you plan on using CGI scripts, particularly computationally intensive CGI scripts. The heavier the script, the more processing power you'll need. This is a tricky thing to try and gauge, but you should be aware of it. More details to come in a later chapter.

The important considerations in choosing the hardware, though, are:

• Memory requirements. While Apache and other Web servers are pretty easy on the system in terms of CPU (when tuned right), they can be pigs when it comes to memory. A moderately busy Web server running on Intel hardware should be given about 32 megabytes of memory, at least. An equally busy server on a RISC-chip-based platform should be given 64 megabytes. This is all presuming that the only thing this box will be used for is the Web server - if not, then this is the amount of extra memory you should add over and above the amount used for the other processing.
• Disk speeds. Since so much of what a Web server does is related to shoving files around, Web servers are often very demanding on the I/O systems. You should make sure that whatever system you get has the best internal "bandwidth" possible. On Intel platforms, for example, this means making sure you get a PCI motherboard and a PCI SCSI-3 disk controller, with SCSI-3 disks. This internal bandwidth is probably much faster than your bandwidth to the Internet, but servers do a lot of processing internally so that extra headroom is essential.
• Ethernet cards. There is a surprising amount of variance between good and bad EtherNet cards. Don't skimp in this department, or you may find your output to your network to be very poor.

These are the essential considerations. All the UNIX vendors are aware of this; their operating systems were punished over the last year or two by high performance systems, and just about all of them have since made performance tuning a priority. But as noted earlier, for the common case (just dishing out flat files), extremely cheap hardware can go an extremely long way.

Table of Contents

02 - Introduction to Web Servers

04 - Getting Started with Your Web Server