Servers for Not Yet Techies

Servers are simple yet, because the term is used so much in information technology, can seem complicated. It helps if you grasp the foundation. A server does just that -- it serves. It offers up data or some other program you want to access.

Part of the confusion comes because the word servers can apply to both hardware and software. There are large-scale computers which are at least as powerful as older mainframe computers and which house the software that allows various aspects of a network to work. These are far larger than personal computers.

Also, the software programs running on computers which serve up information or other programming upon request are also often referred to as servers.

For instance, you're sitting at a personal computer at home or in your office. Your browser program has gone to my web site host's servers, and it is serving you this web page -- that is, downloading it to your PC so you can view and read this page.

I sure hope my web site host has many large computers hooked up to the Internet to bring you my site and the many others they host. Plus, these large computers must be running special software programs to allow them to send HTML files such as this page to your browser, upon your request.

Actually, a web site servers software program can run on computer as small as a PC, but professional site hosts should be using bigger and better equipment for the job. You could actually put such software on your computer, load your own web site, and that site would be accessible to everybody on the Internet as long as your computer was turned on and connected to the Internet directly.

Of course, this is not efficient. Servers are used in many different ways. For instance, Microsoft markets a product called Exchange Server, which is special software designed to be run on a large computer as part of a Windows 2000 network. It acts to "serve up" email within the network and other forms of communication.

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