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  1. April 2009 Web Server Survey

    In the April 2009 survey we received responses from 231,510,169 sites. This represents an increase of over 6 million sites when compared with last month, with Google and nginx accounting for almost all of the changes. Apache remains in the lead, as it has since 1996, with a total of over 106 million sites, followed by Microsoft-IIS with over 67 million and QQ with almost 29 million.

    Some interesting language specific servers which can be seen in this month's survey include the Ruby application server Mongrel, with just over 41 thousand sites, and the python based Zope with almost 46 thousand. The Pike and C based Caudium has almost 14 thousand sites, the Erlang based Yaws has about 70, and a newcomer, Salvia, which is a lightweight web server framework written in Haskell, has one.

    Following on from last month's mention of fake server headers, where we saw the venerable ZX_Spectrum/1997 (Sinclair_BASIC), this month we have hi, appearing as the server banner for twitter, which is currently the 432nd most popular site amongst our toolbar community.

    Total Sites Across All Domains August 1995 - April 2009

    Total Sites Across All Domains, August 1995 - April 2009

    Market Share for Top Servers Across All Domains August 1995 - April 2009

    Graph of market share for top servers across all domains, August 1995 - April 2009

    DeveloperMarch 2009PercentApril 2009PercentChange
    Apache104,178,85246.35%106,368,72745.95%-0.41
    Microsoft66,229,25029.47%67,767,92829.27%-0.20
    qq.com28,905,12912.86%28,905,13312.49%-0.38
    Google5,403,9302.40%7,229,0333.12%0.72
    nginx3,838,7841.71%6,100,4242.64%0.93

    (more...)

    Posted by Netcraft on 6th April, 2009 in Web Server Survey Share

  2. Most Reliable Hosting Company Sites in March 2009

    Rank Company site OS Outage
    hh:mm:ss    		 Failed
    Req%    		 DNS Connect First
    byte    		 Total
    1 ReliableServers.com FreeBSD  0:00:00  0.010  0.205 0.015 0.039 0.055
    2 Swishmail FreeBSD  0:00:00  0.010  0.606 0.016 0.032 0.086
    3 www.acens.com Linux  0:00:00  0.010  0.502 0.063 0.286 0.545
    4 Hosting 4 Less Linux  0:00:00  0.010  0.218 0.131 0.267 0.531
    5 www.netcetera.co.uk Windows Server 2003  0:00:00  0.014  1.291 0.048 0.099 0.203
    6 New York Internet FreeBSD  0:00:00  0.019  0.395 0.030 0.063 0.136
    7 www.green.ch F5 Big-IP  0:00:00  0.019  1.403 0.049 0.168 0.316
    8 www.dinahosting.com Linux  0:00:00  0.019  0.569 0.053 0.234 0.408
    9 Pair Networks FreeBSD  0:00:00  0.019  0.508 0.059 0.122 0.304
    10 INetU unknown  0:00:00  0.019  1.226 0.074 0.156 0.245

    See full table

    Acens, Hosting 4 Less, ReliableServers.com and Swishmail had the most reliable hosting company sites in March 2009, with each site failing to respond to only two of the requests made by Netcraft's performance collectors.

    Swishmail has consistently been in the top ten since they first entered in August 2008, but this is their first appearance as number one. Based in New York, Swishmail specialise in email hosting, and offer a variety of email and web hosting solutions. The company's main website is served by nginx, running on FreeBSD.

    This is the third time in the last six months that the aptly named ReliableServers.com has been in the top ten, having come in seventh last month, fifth in January and fourth in October 2008. Located in Newark, New Jersey, ReliableServers offer services such as VPS hosting and colocation. Their front page is served by Apache on FreeBSD.

    Hosting 4 Less has been in the top ten three times in the last six months, after taking tenth place in January, third in December 2008 and sixth in October 2008. Hosting 4 Less is based in California, and offer a variety of hosting services, including online backup. Their front page is served by Apache on Linux.

    Acens is based in Spain and is one of three European companies in this month's top-ten. They offer a wide range of services, from web hosting to colocation and networking. This is the second time that Acens has been ranked first, the last being August 2007, which saw Acens in joint first position with INetU and New York Internet. Acens were also in the top ten last month.

    Coming in a close second, with only three failed responses is Netcetera, a British company based on the Isle of Man. Netcetera offer co-location, hosting and a range of other services. Netcetera have the only site in this month's top ten which is served by IIS on Windows Server 2003.

    New York Internet, which was last month's most reliable hosting site, appears sixth this month.

    (more...)

    Posted by Matthew Hunt on 1st April, 2009 in Performance Share

  3. Deluge of Browser Security Issues Drives Mass Migration

    Netcraft has observed a surge in popularity of the Lynx browser, particularly since the recent Pwn2Own competition, which was held at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver last month. During the course of the competition, security researchers once again exposed fresh vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.

    Financial institutions have noted that the Lynx browser is particularly suitable for online banking, as it supports the latest cryptographic ciphers used in ecommerce, and is immune to attacks via JavaScript, Flash and other multimedia content. Lynx's algorithms for dealing with such threats are so comprehensive, it is just as safe as if the multimedia content was not there.

    mountebankshare.png
    User Agent share at FNB Oki Koki

    April Erste, Public Relations Manager at the First National Bank of Oki Koki, told Netcraft that users are migrating to Lynx because of its speed and advanced security features. She added: "Lynx has not once suffered a buffer overflow in its image processing, and indeed has suffered no security vulnerabilities at all in the last 2 years." By comparison, the most recent Firefox security update was only 4 days ago.

    The bank also notes that Telnet remains popular with a small group of its customers. Although it lacks the sophisticated user interface of Lynx, many security experts argue that Telnet is significantly more secure and has the largest installed base of any browser.

    Erste said that while the bank is dedicated to providing an accessible online banking experience, some customers still report difficulties when trying to make HTTPS requests through Telnet without the aid of an extended keyboard layout.

    Telnet online banking
    A customer navigates the bank's online portal using Telnet

    One factor that has held back wider adoption of Lynx is its lack of protection against phishing. As with other web browsers, it can be difficult to tell a genuine bank website from a well-constructed lookalike. To bolster Lynx's growing footprint in the browser market, Netcraft has released the Netcraft Toolbar for Lynx. This free add-on blends in at the top of every web page, and not only protects Lynx users against phishing attacks, but the beautiful text-based rendition of the Netcraft logo is sure to brighten anyone's day.

    Netcraft Toolbar for Lynx

    Posted by Paul Mutton on 1st April, 2009 in Dogfood Share