Computer Server

You must have heard the term 'computer server' when people discuss Internet and computer networking related issues. Many times you must have seen the most common 'DNS server error' or 'remote computer server not responding' message when connecting with the Internet, which must have made you wonder what is a computer server and what role does it play on the Internet. This article is aimed at clearly defining what is a computer server and demystifying this computer term for laymen.

What is a Computer Server?

A server is a computer that serves information and resources on a computer network. If you are looking for a very technical computer server definition, then it is defined as a software program that plays the role of being an 'Internet socket listener'. An Internet technology socket is any portal, that can carry out two way communication on a computing network based on Internet protocols. A server listens or receives requests from a network through a socket and shares information and resources through it. In simple words, a computer server is a software program which enables the sharing of computing resources on any computer network. The resources may be application programs or hardware devices that need to be shared with many client computers on a network.

A server program needs to be hosted on a computer with high processing speed and high working memory as it needs to handle multiple requests from many client computers on a network. These server computers require special operating systems that have inbuilt functionality to handle various server tasks. The processing power needed by a server, entirely depends on the scale of requests and tasks that need to be handled by server. Server computer prices are generally quite higher than prices of personal computers, due to the advanced hardware and software installed in them. In the next section, we will have a look at the various avatars of a computer server.

Types of Computer Servers

There are different types of servers, depending on the task that it handles for a network. For example, a print server or a home computer server is designed to handle print requests from an entire network, while a file server is designed for intra-network file sharing. A web server is designed to host a website and serve its pages to clients computers on the Internet. A database server can handle all sorts of data processing tasks on a network. A mail server or SMTP server is designed to handle email sites, while online gaming servers can enable online multiplayer gaming. There are proxy servers that act as a buffer in client request processing from diverse servers.

There are DNS (Domain Naming System) servers that carry out the function of translating domain names into IP addresses and vice versa. There are servers that carry out all these functions or more. A server may be made up of one powerful machine or a connected network of several machines working together (also known as the server farm). These servers are generally hosted in special clean, high security, temperature controlled environments and are connected together using server racks and high speed cables. Some of the most powerful of server networks are used by the Google search engine to deliver search results for more than a billion requests that it gets everyday. An application server vs web server comparison will make it easier for you to understand the difference between these two prime types.

If you are wondering how to build a server computer, then know that it takes quite a bit of understanding of network computing software. You can use a Windows home server program inbuilt into your Windows OS, to set up a server for resource sharing on your home network. There are other server programs available on every computer operating system, that can let you set up your own website. You need to take a tutorial on how to set up a server to understand all the details of how to go about it. There are many such tutorials available on the Internet.

Hope this article has given you a general idea about the role played by a computer server on the Internet or any other computer networking system. In simple terms it is the central computing system that plays the role of a manager for the whole system and controls the use of computing resources. As explained above, it may carry out a range of tasks or focus on a single task on a computer network. The implementation of the world wide web was a success because of the client server software architecture model that was adopted in its implementation. If you want to set up and host your own website, you must learn how to build a server computer and how to implement services on it. With server software programs available on Linux systems (like Samba or Apache) for free, you can easily do that. Just try out setting one up to actually understand how computer servers work on the Internet.