What Is A Server?

In a computer network, a server is a computer and software whose role is to respond automatically to requests sent by clients – computers and software – via the network.

The servers are commonly used in the treatment of data, companies, institutions, and the Internet, or they are often a focal point and are used simultaneously by many users to store, share and exchange information. Different users can operate the server from different clients, for example, from a personal computer, workstation, or terminal.

The World Wide Web, electronic mail and file sharing are some applications that make use of servers.

History Of Server

The first generation of programmable computers emerged in the 1950s. The computer then flew through a terminal or a teletype.

Since the 1970s, computers have sufficient computing power to perform multiple processes simultaneously. Miniaturization and lower prices have allowed the use of personal computer on a mass scale since the 1980s. These personal computers (PCs) could be connected to computers with a terminal emulator software. Users of personal computers mutually exchanged files by copying to floppy disks and floppy disks, which were then removed and inserted on the recipient’s computer.

In 1980 appeared the first file servers. They facilitated the exchange of files between users. Used in institutions, they have successfully allowed multiple users to run the same software simultaneously. A single copy of the software is stored on the file server, and the processing of the software is executed by the clients using the server to sends files to and fro between the users and the server.

A few years later the computing power of personal computers exceeded that of recent computers installed in institutions.

When a computer is connected to a central computer via a terminal emulator, the central computer performs all the treatments, and the computer computes the results. On the contrary, when a file server is used, the server performs no processing – all processing is done by client computers. The idea of using the server to do the processing became a reality (to share the computing and sharing between the mainframe and personal computer) with the arrival of the client-server architecture technology.

In the 1990s came the three-tier architecture, an evolution of client-server architecture, which will separate treatment in 3 parts, processed by a client and two servers.

According to the firm Netcraft, in March 2009, over 220 million web servers in the world were present, and the number is increasing steadily since the invention of the World Wide Web in 1995.

Distributed Application Technique Used In Servers

A distributed application is an application in which salaries are distributed among several computers on a network. A communications protocol establishes the rules by which computers communicate and cooperate.

In an application in client / server processing is done by the joint implementation of two different and complementary software placed on computers: the client and the server.

The client makes requests, and then transmits to the server. The server receives and processes applications, and then sends its reply to the client. The client receives the response (for example, presents the results on screen). A communications protocol establishes the format of requests sent to the server, and responses to it.

The Peer-to-peer (or P2P) is the opposite of the client-server mode.

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