What is a Web Server?

A Web server is either software that manages web sites or the hardware on which server software is run.  
In general terms, if you want your web pages made available to the world you must put them on a web server. 
A web server uses a web browser to communicate with its clients, therefore it is also called as a 
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server. Popular web servers include 
Apache, Lotus Domino, and Sun Java Enterprise System.

How Web Servers Work?
When you type in an URL like http://www.google.com in a web browser, you see a message that 
says ‘Connecting to site google.com’ for a few seconds before you see the HTML page of the website.  
In the background,
1. The URL is broken down into:
Protocol: http
Server Name: google.com
File Name: in this case default index.htm
2. The browser communicates with a Name Server to convert the Server Name into an IP Address, 
which it uses to connect to the server machine. Name Server, AKA, Host is a computer that maps domain 
names (say "google.com") to its IP addresses ("216.239.39.99").
3. Connection to the Server is then establised on port 80.
4. HTTP protocol is then used by web servers and browsers to send and receive data over the Internet. 

For more information goto:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-server.htm/printable



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