Topic awaiting preservation: AOLserver

why have I never heard of this before?!?!

you weiners need to step it up a notch up in heah

seriously though, this looks pretty cool, suprised the heck out of me when I heard something good associated with AOL, if you can get past the name, give that a read.

Jason

see also
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AolServer
and
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PhilipGreenspun (who lost a ton of credit with me lately)
also
http://aolserver.com/


Basicially, it's a mod_tcl compiled into something different than apache.
And we all know that apache can't be beaten ;-)

yeah, now, Apache is wonderful but look at the history and amount of traffic that the AOLserver handled(s) in comparison to Apache along the same timeline. AOL was actually the innovator in many areas. I was a little shocked. Just goes to show that you can't judge a book by it's cover.

thanks for the links man, the c2.com is a fantastic site.

Jason

Clicking around the Philip Greenspun stuff, I ran across the following quote:

quote:

---

If you see one of your best people walking out the door at 6:00 pm, try to think why you haven't challenged that person with an interesting project. If you see one of your average programmers walking out the door at 6:00 pm, recognize that this person is not developing into a good programmer.

---

The entire article, in fact, is about how if people are taking weekends off, or working less than 70 hours a week, they're poor programmers and poor workers. This is management arrogance to a simply astounding degree.

Cell 1250 :: alanmacdougall.com :: Illustrator tips

which were just the kind statements that made me loose all respect for greenspun....

yes, c2 is very interesting... the *original* wiki actually (and one'd have found quite a few links in our faq to it as well...).

Anyhow, my hostparents had a saying:
"Consider the source".

It's very true in this case.
And especially the comparison to apache strikes me as being insubstantial. Count the numbers in that table. Count them again. Make your own conclusion.

quote:

---

The difference between these two servers boils down to how they achieve high-performance and what support they provide for generating Web pages on-the-fly. On Unix, Apache is a forking daemon, which means that the server replicates Itself, and the various copies take turns in servicing requests. However, the Windows version of Apache is threaded and the Unix version is being also converted to this model. In contrast, AOLServer has always been threaded. Instead of spawning multiple copies of itself, a single AOLServer process is all that ever exists, and lightweight threads inside the server process are created to handle each incoming request. Creating threads is generally quite fast, and it is easier to maintain state information in a single process.

---

source considered sure, I was just marvelling at this fine web server that I had never heard of before, and wondering why... give credit where it's due, sounds like a web server that would be quite well known and used if it weren't for the AOL on the front of it. Then again, I doubt I'll have a need for anything that handle 28,000 hits per second =)

Jason

JKMabry: I've been called a:

quote:

---

forking daemon

---

I just never realised it was a good thing

Anyway why don't we use it?

1. Do many people run it as part of a hosting package? I've never seen it (there is a link in one of the articles below but that business no longer exists). Perhaps in many moons it might get more popular but Apache has a lot of users who know Apache inside and out and that is a lot of momentum to overcome and you'd need to offer something special. It appears to be used on about 1% of servers (based on number of pages served) but a big slice of that must be AOL - its an old survey (AOLSERVER is listed as Naviserver):
www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.200007/weighted.html

More recent surveys don't reveal much:
www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200305/index.html

although this suggests usage around 0.01% (so perhaps its day is done):
www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200305/servers.html

Yeah this 1999 survey gives a higher use of AOLServer on top sites (which one might expect):
http://www.e-gineer.com/articles/web-servers-used-at-the-top-sites.phtml

2. AOL are sooooooooo bad I think Satan would be worried about getting in league with them, See:
http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,7558,982822,00.html

3. As TP says "Consider the source". I had a dig around and found:
http://weblogs.userland.com/qube/stories/storyReader$587

quote:

---

As a Web server, AOLserver makes a respectable showing for a mid-level solution, but it's not quite in the same league as Apache, Netscape Enterprise and FastTrack, and WebStar Pro.

---

from:
www.serverwatch.com/sreviews/article.php/1368291

but see:
www.theashergroup.com/tag/articles/reverse-proxies/

and there is a general comparison here:
www.galileo.edu/wp/presentation-html-download?presentation_id=522

There is a discussion here which makes a lot of good points about not just going with the maximum possible performance - like cars you have to base your decision on a number of factors:
http://forums.devshed.com/t39693/s.html

[edit: And, of course c2 rocks:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?OzoneAsylum

]

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Ok, so you want to quite screwing around now, Emp, and find some info on the subject already.....

DL: You forking daemon

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

I'm confused... so noone agrees with the article that said that early in their development when compared side by side the AOL server was much more capable of serving dynamic webs than Apache?

I hate AOL as much as the next guy, maybe more since I have a few relatives that want me to *fix* theirs now and then, so I was quite shocked to hear something that was positive, favorable and open source. Thought that was a neat deal, and that's that.

Emps: link mastah! where's that reverently bowing slimie?

Jason