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Digital Literacy How the Internet Works The Internet Clients and Servers

Ryan Jin
Ryan Jin
15,337 Points
Posted by Ryan Jin
Ryan Jin
15,337 Points

Can somebody explain what is a Apache server and what is a FTP Server?

Can somebody explain what is a Apache server and what is a FTP Server? I've heard that the most common server is an Apache server, and there is also FTP server. Are these in the same category as Database Server, File Server, etc. which are mentioned in this video? Can somebody explain what they are?

3 Answers

karson Adam
karson Adam
32,623 Points

Apache server is a webpage server , and FTP Server is a File server

David Bilson
David Bilson
13,819 Points
David Bilson
David Bilson
13,819 Points

An Apache Server (web Server) is a server which is used to serve up webpages. It runs on the Linux / Unix Operating System. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_HTTP_Server

The equivalent server that is used on Windows Servers is called Internet Information Services (IIS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Information_Services

An FTP server is used when you request a file.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Transfer_Protocol

Joshua Britton
Joshua Britton
10,252 Points
Joshua Britton
Joshua Britton
10,252 Points

Just wanted to add, as discussed in the course servers have 2 components: a hardware component and a software component.

As far as I understand it Apache or IIS (Microsoft's web server product), database servers (SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, and others), and other types of servers are simply configurations of the hardware & software that make them capable of doing certain tasks (i.e. serve web pages if it is a web server, manage a database and queries if it is a database server, or serve up files in a directory if it is an FTP server).

So the hardware component could be used for any of these things (to serve web pages, to store & manage a database, or to serve files), but it's once you've installed the software that the hardware then becomes "a web server" or "a database server" or a "file server".

To use an analogy, my laptop has a certain combination of hardware, but it becomes useful to me to write documents, surf the web, or play games based on the software I install (i.e. the Office Suite or iWork, a browser, or maybe No Man's Sky ;)