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Hardware and software requirements

A public Web server can be run on virtually any computer system connected to the Net. If you already have computer systems, the chances are that you will be able to run a Web server on one of your machines.

Multi-tasking operating systems, such as Windows NT or UNIX, are generally better suited to running a Web server than single-user systems such as Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Windows or MS-DOS, although these do not preclude the possibility. The size of machine required depends very much on the volume of requests to be processed and the type of programs, if any, used to generate dynamic documents. A moderately sized UNIX workstation will usually be able to handle even a large Web load. The limiting factor is more likely to be communications bandwidth than anything else.

The server software itself usually occupies very little disk space. The main determinant of storage requirements is the volume of information to be published. The choice and installation of server programs is discussed in Chapter .

The public domain Perl programming language is widely used on the Web for generating dynamic documents and processing logs. There are even Web servers implemented in Perl. Many useful and widely available Web tools are written in Perl. While not absolutely necessary, it is extremely useful as it is ideally suited for processing and analysing text.

Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.