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Netcraft Web Server Stats Challenged 461

Posted by simoniker from the he-said-she-said dept.
kolchak writes "An article in The Age has an interesting analysis of the Netcraft Web Server Usage Reports. According to Port80 Software, Netcraft's surveys are biased towards domain name parkers and very small web sites, not taking into account how popular a site may be - there's some interesting results in the competing Port80 survey." However, it should be pointed out that Port80 "develops software products to enhance the security, performance and user experience of Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server."
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Netcraft Web Server Stats Challenged More

Netcraft Web Server Stats Challenged

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  • Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, since they are so closely tied to microsoft, looks like they have a BIT of a bias...

    Do we even need to think about this? How is this news?

    • Don't matter what they say...
      The site is Slashdotted (tm).

      Good job Port80!

    • Re:Hmm (Score:3, Funny)

      by Znork ( 31774 )
      "Well, since they are so closely tied to microsoft, looks like they have a BIT of a bias..."

      Well, of course they're claiming that Netcraft is biased as they survey all webservers they can find. Port 80's idea of an 'unbiased' survey appears to be more in the line of '100% of all IIS sites run IIS which proves IIS is the most commonly used webserver'.

    • Yes they are... check this out (Score:5, Funny)

      by imtheguru ( 625011 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @04:50AM (#7576164)
      i tried their header check for www.apache.org [link is here] [port80software.com]

      Port80 returned this result:
      "We detect that www.apache.org is running Apache/2.0.48-dev (Unix)."

      But further down the page is this gem:
      "No matter what the above results show, this company may be running Microsoft IIS and protecting its Web server identity with ServerMask."

      WTF?!

      • Re:Yes they are... check this out (Score:5, Interesting)

        by kyrre ( 197103 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @07:28AM (#7576546)
        Apperantly servermask is their product. When I try a site I knew running IIS response is like so:

        Protect your Web server identity with ServerMask!
        Why let anyone find out you're running a Microsoft IIS server? Don't tempt potential hackers!

        Try ServerMask FREE for 30 days. Download Now!
        Buy ServerMask for only $49.95 today!

        No: "No matter what the above results show, this company may be running Apache and protecting its Web server identity with ServerMask."

        Security through masking the server string sounds very secure. sigh.

  • A bit more than the average MS bias (Score:5, Informative)

    by SeanTobin ( 138474 ) * <byrdhuntr@hCHEETAHotmail.com minus cat> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @12:40AM (#7575292)
    This is wrong on soooooo many levels. I could understand trying to twist the truth by redefining what a webserver is... but thier sampling method is straight out wrong.

    Want proof? Here it is. Go to the linked article, (or click here [port80software.com]) and where they have the box to check your server header (about half way down the page) type in www.microsoft.com - you will see its running IIS/6. A nice happy IIS server.

    Now, type in my web server - http://www.isthatdamngood.com - its a nice Linux/Apache server. My server will CRASH thier app! Actually, a lot of linux servers will crash it...

    Kinda hard to claim your results are more indicitative of the market when your scanning technology is flat out broken.
    • What does this have to do with their sampling method? I seriously doubt that their scanning system is some guy randonly typing websites into that box and writing down the results. The back end code which actually performs the server detection could work just fine and still produce and error during display.

      • Re:A bit more than the average MS bias (Score:4, Insightful)

        by the_2nd_coming ( 444906 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @12:49AM (#7575346) Homepage
        umm, how can you claim that they are sampling correctly when your only evidence of the way they sample is by way of an app that crashs on linux/apache servers?
        • I never claimed that their sampling method was correct. I only claimed that there is insufficient evidence to say that it is incorrect, especially when the evidence presented tells absolutely nothing about the sampling method in question (ie, which sites they chose to sample, how many times they sample the sites, what weighting they give to each site, etc...).

          From the evidence at hand all you can say is that they aren't the best ASP/SQL programmers which is completely unrelated to the sampling of websites
          • can you take a company seriously if tehy cannot do some simple ASP/SQL code?

            please, I am all for schepticism, but you are using it to help prop up your world view, which is not what being a scheptic is about, being a scheptic is about being open minded until you get all the information, while this is not all the information, there is a thing called proffecionalism. if you can not present yourself in a proffecional mannor then you do not deserve the luxury of being thought of as credible. look at an intervi

          • Re:A bit more than the average MS bias (Score:5, Informative)

            by panaceaa ( 205396 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @04:02AM (#7576045) Homepage Journal
            The parent poster's point is that their site grabber program can get IIS sites but crashes on some Apache sites. Port80 Software may use the same code to run their surveys since both the grabber and survey programs need the core feature of analyzing a site's HTTP headers.

            So if their survey script also returns invalid data for Apache sites, then the IIS numbers would be much higher than they actually are. I would at least like to see some actual numbers rather than pure percents before I believed their data. They surveyed 1000 sites -- how many sites are included in the survey's data?

            Another thing that seems odd to me is Netscape iPlanet usage is higher than Apache. Where's the primary data to support that?
            • The parent poster's point is that their site grabber program can get IIS sites but crashes on some Apache sites

              More to the point, if they understand HTTP so badly that they can't even get server headers and parse them correctly, do you really want to trust such a company with HTTP-rewriting, compression, caching, and wildcard-DNS services that's their main product?

              Seems to me that those sort of programs require a good deal of knowledge to get working correctly. Maybe a few levels above what you need to
      • What does this have to do with their sampling method? I seriously doubt that their scanning system is some guy randonly typing websites into that box and writing down the results. The back end code which actually performs the server detection could work just fine and still produce and error during display.

        In this kind of code, the web-based frontend is typically the more trivial component -- and thus the one that's not likely to break. If something breaks, the safer presumption is that it's the place wher

    • Re:A bit more than the average MS bias (Score:5, Informative)

      by ejaw5 ( 570071 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @12:51AM (#7575352)
      Check out the ad below the detection test:

      Note:
      No matter what the above results show, this company may be running Microsoft IIS and protecting its Web server identity with ServerMask.

      Try ServerMask FREE for 30 days. Download Now!
      Buy ServerMask for only $49.95 today!

    • Re:A bit more than the average MS bias (Score:5, Informative)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @12:55AM (#7575375) Homepage Journal
      Worked for me. I tried "slashdot.org" and "www.theregister.co.uk" - both of them worked just fine. However, "www.isthatdamngood.com" did indeed cause a scripting error - but I doubt it would effect their actual surveying, it's just an ASP error, not an actual "crash."

      Anyway, it's long been known that Netcraft's methods are flawed, since it counts individual web servers multiple times for each virtual domain. It should only count unique sites. (For example, Slashdot counts for something like 13 sites - the individual sections (like apple.slashdot.org - I'm not listing all of them), slashdot.org, www.slashdot.org, images.slashdot.org.)

      It's still debatable what the correct survey method is (and whether Port80's method is any better), but Netcraft is biased towards sites with lots of virtual domain names. (I'd imagine SourceForge gets counted many times, too...) Of course, it's also questionable if individual servers in a round-robin load-balancing solution should be counted, so counting by IP instead of domain name is questionable too.

      As is often said, "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics" - any counting method has issues.

      Blah, I can't preview because Mozilla is f***ing broken and won't display the preview page, so please pardon any typos.

      • Except... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Theatetus ( 521747 ) * on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:59AM (#7575626) Journal
        For example, Slashdot counts for something like 13 sites - the individual sections (like apple.slashdot.org - I'm not listing all of them)

        What about boxes like the ones where I work that run many (dozens, hundreds even) domains on one physical server? That's where the real difference creeps in; it's how 60-whatever % of sites run on Linux while 60-whatever % of boxes running web servers run Windows. Lots of the Linux boxes run multiple sites (and I don't just mean www.foo.com and images.foo.com; I mean they run www.foo.com and www.bar.com and www.baz.com and www.qxt.com on the single box).

        So, take one of my boxes at work: it currently hosts 53 second-level domains and about 200 subdomains from them. The one I'm thinking of has its own class C netblock, but we have similar ones that just have a single IP address for their dozens of sites. Do you want that counted as one server, as 53, or as 200? Netcraft says it's 200. Port80 says it's 1. I'd like to count it as 53. Netcraft's way tells you what people who make web hosting decisions like. Port80's way tells you what people who make hardware and software buying decisions like.

        • Re:Except... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by RoLi ( 141856 )
          Can't you take a course and just read? It's not that hard.

          Netcraft says it's 200. Port80 says it's 1.

          Wrong. Port80 says it's zero, zilch, nada because they only count the frontpage of Fortune 1000 companies and nothing else.

    • I was about to make the same comment, since trying one of my local webservers also crashed the app. Then I discovered the webserver was down. (Apparently it didn't start after a scheduled reboot.)

      However, even apache webservers that are up are causing the script to fail on occasion....

    • Something smells... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pridefinger ( 549632 ) <freckledpenguinNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:08AM (#7575444)
      I tried several sites myself with my own javascript and guess what?

      My results were were different than their's more than half the time! I figured they had multiple servers running, etc., so I rechecked at least 5 times on all sites (all sites checked, that is ~50)...NO CHANGE!

      Take disney.com, for example. Their site says IIS 5.0. I got netscape...so did netcraft.

      One word... BULL#%&*!

      -Pride

      • Re:Something smells... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by a.koepke ( 688359 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:58AM (#7575621)
        I just checked this too... Port80 displays MS IIS and Netcraft displays Netscape. I thought I would do my own check. This now shows a flaw in both checks, Netcraft and Port80.

        andreas:/var/mail# telnet disney.com 80
        Trying 198.187.189.55...
        Connected to disney.com.
        Escape character is '^]'.
        HEAD / HTTP/1.0

        HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
        Server: Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 SP3
        Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 06:44:12 GMT
        Location: http://disney.go.com/
        Content-length: 0
        Content-type: text/html
        Connection: close

        Connection closed by foreign host.
        andreas:/var/mail# telnet disney.go.com 80
        Trying 198.187.189.93...
        Connected to disney.go.com.
        Escape character is '^]'.
        HEAD / HTTP/1.0

        HTTP/1.0 200 OK
        Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
        P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CURa ADMa DEVa TAIa PSAa PSDa IVAi IVDi CONi OUR SAMo OTRo BUS PHY ONL UNI PUR COM NAV INT DEM CNT STA PRE"
        Set-Cookie: SWID=E4481904-1BC1-4D6B-A21F-5FB993D69628; path=/; expires=Thu, 27-Nov-2023 06:44:39 GMT; domain=.go.com;
        Cache-Expires: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 06:47:13 GMT
        Cache-Control: max-age=300
        Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 06:44:39 GMT
        Content-Type: text/html
        Accept-Ranges: bytes
        Last-Modified: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 06:42:13 GMT
        ETag: "ba9b4197b1b4c31:b10"
        Content-Length: 6260
        Vary: Accept-Encoding, User-Agent
        Via: 1.1 redline-7 (Redline Networks Accelerator 2.2.8 0)

        Connection closed by foreign host.


        Interesting, Disney.com is a Netscape webserver which just does a 302 Moved header and sends the client to Disney.go.com which is an IIS box.

        So the actual Disney site you end up with (Disney.go.com) is IIS so in that case Port80 are sort of right in reporting it as so. But Netcraft are also right in reporting Netscape for the Disney.com domain since that is what Disney.com is running, Disney.go.com is a seperate domain and would be counted seperately.

    • Servermask didn't see that coming! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by morcheeba ( 260908 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:17AM (#7575477) Journal
      Port80 Survey header check
      Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e57'
      [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]String or binary data would be truncated. /surveys/top1000webservers/headercheck.asp, line 121

      A suggestion for their servermask product: COVER UP ERRORS THAT GIVE AWAY INFORMATION. Seriously, if they think that headers are going to give away a lot of info, then forced errors will, too. But, there is boatload of other techniques [insecure.org] (including passive techniques [google.com]) that get around their security-throught-obscurity program.

  • So suprising (Score:4, Insightful)

    by linux_warp ( 187395 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @12:43AM (#7575307) Homepage
    From thier Partners [port80software.com] page:

    "Port80 Software's Strategic Partners:
    Microsoft, Inc."

    Strategic in what way? FUD?

  • I tried homepage.apple.com (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fidget42 ( 538823 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @12:43AM (#7575310)
    and this was their response:

    We detect that homepage.mac.com is running Apache/1.3.27 (Darwin).

    but with this caveat

    Note:
    No matter what the above results show, this company may be running Microsoft IIS and protecting its Web server identity with ServerMask.

    Nope, no bias there.

  • And the winner is.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @12:44AM (#7575319) Homepage Journal
    Thus spake the article:
    Port80 Software, a San Diego-based company that develops software to enhance the security, performance and user experience of Microsoft's Internet Information Services Web server, said it had conducted a survey of Fortune1000 companies recently and found that Microsoft IIS had ongoing dominance in the enterprise with a 53.8 percent market share.
    ...snip snip...
    "What do Netcraft's findings prove about Web server market share? It all depends on how you choose to define 'market share'," Lima said. "Netcraft attempts to review every detectable site on the Internet to generate their web server statistics, and this gives their survey a natural bias in favour of web servers that host relatively low-traffic or even parked domains.
    ...snip snip..
    Considering that port80 has a serious bias towards IIS, any conclusions they draw should be taken with a mountain-sized grain of salt. I guess it boils down to what you think "mark share" is: what is everyone running, or what servers are the fortune 1000 companies running? The answer seems pretty obvious to me.

    • salt (Score:3, Informative)

      by Minna Kirai ( 624281 )
      should be taken with a mountain-sized grain of salt

      People who enjoy the taste of salt add it in proportion to the amount of food they intend to eat. "Take with a grain of salt" means "Eat so little that just one grain is adequate seasoning", or just "eat very little". The suggestion to only consume a small amount is meant to imply a low level of trust. It is the opposite of expressions like "Swallow if whole" and "Swallow it hook, line, and sinker".

      Expanding the salt grain to mountainous proportions t

  • This makes sense.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @12:45AM (#7575323) Homepage
    Ok, so the Microsoft connection makes it easy to write the whole thing off as astroturfing, but they have a point.

    Parked domain names usually aren't separate websites; they're usually hundreds, or thousands of domains pointing to the same server/service that's trying to sell them for profit. In addition, Netcraft counts www.yahooo.com and www.yahoo.com as separate sites-- Even though they both go to Yahoo.

    In this manner, Netcraft's method *is* unfair, because there's no weight as to the location to which the domains point.
    • Is there any service that ranks by counting a server only once, no matter how many domain names actually point there, but then biases by traffic?

      IMHO traffic is far more important than actual names.
    • Netcraft's method *is* unfair, because there's no weight as to the location to which the domains point.

      What's the alternative, counting by IP? It could be interesting, but not necessarily more representative. I'm on a shared host with dozens of other domains: by choosing that host, we 'cast votes' for Apache, didn't we?

    • Ok, so use the survey's at securityspace.com (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The surveys [securityspace.com] at securityspace.com attempt to weight webserver popularity by site popularity.

    • Re:This makes sense.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Eivind ( 15695 ) <eivindorama@gmail.com> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @03:49AM (#7575999) Homepage
      Except if you'd bothered to check you would notice that Netcraft is fully aware of this, and thus produce different numbers for "web-servers" and "active web-servers" the latter excludes domains which are only parked somewhere.

      http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/11/03/novem ber_2003_web_server_survey.html Is the latest survey, apache has 67.41 of all domains (well, all that Netcraft knows about anyways) at 30298060 domains.

      If you look only at "active" domains, apache has 68.60%, so actually even a *higher* market-share. Of a total of 14370515 active domains. (so according to Netcraft, about half of all registered domains are "active" and the other half are "parked"

  • If you do a header check on a site you get this notice at the bottom:
    "No matter what the above results show, this company may be running Microsoft IIS and protecting its Web server identity with ServerMask."

    ServerMask must be the paperbag for ugly IIS servers or corporations who don't want to admit they run IIS

  • LOL (Score:5, Interesting)

    by javiercero ( 518708 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @12:45AM (#7575329)
    It is not only funny that according to their "survey" IIS has more market share than Apache, but *gasp* Netscape has a larger market share than Apache too!

    That is as big of a red flag as I have ever seen.

    Of course the fact that they indeed produce softs for IIS is in no way shape or form any sort of indication to a possible, slight, minimal... bias.

    LOL, a nice laugh... and they may even get slashdotted, which will bring joy to their sorry operation since they will now be able to claim that they are now one of the nets most popular companies/sites. I am sure this is some sort of ploy to get traffic, it will be funny to see if indeed their beloved IIS can stand the slashdot effect. LOL
    • Well, I can't reach their site. ;)
  • http://www.port80software.com/surveys/top1000webse rvers/

    Did someone say biased?

  • Not so inaccurate .. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jcam2 ( 248062 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @12:50AM (#7575347) Homepage
    Even if these Port80 guys are on Microsoft's payroll, the point they make is still quite correct - it make no sense to measure market share by simply counting web hosts. If all the high-traffic web sites on the Internet are running IIS while the numerically greater but less popular remainder are running Apache, can you meaningfully say that Apache has a higher 'market share'?

    Unfortunately, short of tracking people's surfing habits or getting access to web server logs, there is no easy way of working out the popularity of a site. Netcraft's method of polling every known webserver is really the only practical method available, if it is not truly accurate.

    • Re:Not so inaccurate .. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Prof. Pi ( 199260 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @12:59AM (#7575395)
      it make no sense to measure market share by simply counting web hosts. If all the high-traffic web sites on the Internet are running IIS while the numerically greater but less popular remainder are running Apache, can you meaningfully say that Apache has a higher 'market share'?

      Didn't Netcraft themselves cover this topic last year? IIRC, some pro-MS group made the same argument, that you should only count the big guys. They looked at the Fortune N (I forget what N was) and found that lo and behold, IIS came out on top.

      Then Netcraft came back with another study, where they ranked companies not by their Fortune ranking (i.e., total revenue), which would tend to favor MS as that's the "safe" choice for big companies. Instead, they ranked companies by how much revenue they made on the Net (so companies like Amazon would rank much higher), and found that by that measure, Apache was again on top.

  • I think this says it all (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @12:50AM (#7575348)
    "A developer of tools for Microsoft's web server software..."

    Come on. I expect them to pull for their team but let's get real. They are not a neutral party and it is in their interest for people to believe that IIS is more common, whether or not that is actually the case. I don't exactly blame them for trying to spin the "facts" in their favor but following the money does hurt their credibility in this matter.
  • I know slashdot hates a conflicting opinion but... They are claiming that Netcraft does not acurately measure physically machines, instead that it counts domain names. So a machine that may be running Apache or IIS and hosting several sites might be evalulated incorrectly. I don't know how Netcraft checks, but if it is based on domain name then it is a representation of internet sites running a particular webserver/os not machines as a whole. Not that it matters much, but it's nice to know the whole tru
    • One box running multiple sites should not be less valued than multiple boxes running one site each for this simple reason:

      Linux can do it better than Windows and therefore more Linux boxes are going to run multiple sites!
    • The flipside to your point is that they are putting all duplicate domains down to a single machine... how many servers does google run on? according to this slashdot.org would be a single item - its actually 2 IP addresses (1 for the main area, 1 for sections).

      Basically they have a point regarding domant and multiple domains, but they miss as there is no weighting by usage and impotance of the servers content. How many people do you think actually go to www.GreedyCorp.com compared to www.HotTeenSluts.com ?
  • I guess it all depends what kind of data you are looking for depending on which platform you want to sell, but both of these methods seem to produce equally worthless information to me. I would like to see a break down of webservers used/million hits or something to that effect. I suppose to be perfectly fair connection data and processing power would have to be normalized before hand as well.

    Until then I'll happily ignore these poorly done statistical analysis and chose a platform based on my own criter

  • Top 1000 companies... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by khym ( 117618 ) <matt@@@nightrealms...com> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:01AM (#7575414)
    So why should a criteria of "large companies" be better than "all websites"? Large companies aren't going to select a better web server just because they're large, and the coroprate culture of large companies can be it's own sort. If you're going to limit yourself to certain types of companies, shouldn't the limit themselves to, say, the 1000 largest dot-coms? Look at companies that couldn't exist without their website. I rather doubt there'll be much IIS among them...
    • I've surveyed the web for actual content using similar criteria, giving proportional weight the Fortune 1000. I've been able to conclude that:
      • Most websites on the Internet have an annoying Flash intro.
      • Most websites on the Internet make you select your country of origin before letting you see the main page.
      • Most of the images on the World Wide Web are of small groups of people in business attire with earnest expressions focusing attention on some common problem.
      • All websites have an Investor Relations

  • To the slow poke here... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rgelb1 ( 472797 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:02AM (#7575415) Homepage
    ...this story is a plant to sell their ServerMask software.

  • Astroturf, anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by darnok ( 650458 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:04AM (#7575429)
    You know, I wouldn't mind reading this "research" if only the companies involved were forced by some law to declare where their funding's coming from.

    "Yep, we've just proven that Linux is the number one desktop in the world today. This statement brought to you by Novell/SuSE" would sit just fine with me; I could file the statement accordingly.

    As things currently stand,
    - I get to treat all such "research" as crap, regardless of whether it is or not.
    - I get to continually challenge corporate decisions that are made on the basis of such research. "XYZ Research Inc says XYZ is the best product, and they also say they're in no way related to XYZ Inc. It must be true because it's in this magazine"

    I know exactly where it all started, and I'm gonna whack those guys from the "Ponds Institute" if I ever find out who they are...

  • It's just plain wrong. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mustang Matt ( 133426 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:04AM (#7575432)
    I put in my apache/linux server and it said it was running IIS 5.0

  • Corporate Web Servers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ryanw ( 131814 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:06AM (#7575440)
    You have to look at their survey. It's talking about the CORPORATE web servers. I work for a major corporate america company. We have close to 4000 servers handling our "web" environment. That consists of web, app, and database servers. There's more IIS then anything else out there for sure in corporate america. Expecially on the WEB front end. In a corporate environment there are about 20 Windows to 1 Unix boxes. Mostly due to Windows servers being so cheap and can't handle as much load per server. But on the DATABASE backend there is much more UNIX to Windows.

    Another thing is Corporate America is barely getting their feet wet with Linux/Apache. The UNIX boxes that are installed are not running Apache, they're running something from a major vendor (ie. Netscape, etc). Up until this year there was NO linux in the corporate company I work for. If a MAJOR vendor will not support a product, corporate america will not install it. They love to point the finger at the vendors. If there's nobody to point a finger at when something goes wrong, it will not get installed.

    Until Redhat started selling Linux for $5k corporate america wouldn't even bat an eye at it. Now they're eating it up like hot cakes cause it's EXPENSIVE! Linux is no longer a free thing. Now powerful execs can point fingers and plus be able to throw around the "L" buzz word and feel like they're pushing the envelope.
  • ....any publicity is good, and good publicity is even better.

    MS spends more on lawyers and PR than it does on anything else. The big lie lives.

  • A website's a website (Score:5, Insightful)

    by andih8u ( 639841 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:20AM (#7575490)
    It doesn't matter if the domain is parked or serving thousands of pages...domains are just as easily parked on IIS as on Apache.

  • Where's Google? (Score:5, Funny)

    by RT Alec ( 608475 ) * <{moc.elkcuhc.todhsals} {ta} {cela}> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:20AM (#7575491) Homepage Journal

    I could not help but notice that Google, Yahoo, and Slashdot are omitted from their "top 1000" list. Yet rumors persist that these three web sites get a fair amount of traffic [comscore.com].

    • Re:Where's Google? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ChaosDiscord ( 4913 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:53AM (#7575777) Homepage Journal
      I could not help but notice that Google, Yahoo, and Slashdot are omitted from their "top 1000" list.

      The "top 1,000" list is based on the Fortune 1,000. Google, Yahoo, and Slashdot aren't on the Fortune 1,000. The theory is that the Fortune 1,000 indicates Real Companies, and that this is what Real Companies chose. However, many of these Real Companies are holding companies or target highly specialized audiences (like people needing drilling supplies). Many of these Real Companies are actually running what we would consider toy web sites: almost no content, entirely static pages, very few pages, and almost no visitors. So while this may represent what Real Companies chose, it does not necessarily represent what people with Real Work chose.

      • Re:Where's Google? (Score:3, Informative)

        by jrumney ( 197329 )
        The "top 1,000" list is based on the Fortune 1,000.

        No, it's not. Look at the examples they gave of "Top 1000" sites that switched to IIS in the last month: CDW (CDWC, Nasdaq-100), Martin Marietta Materials (MLM, not part of any index), Warnaco (WRNC, not part of any index)

  • Slashdot effect seems to be bringing Port80 Software's server to its knees. On a holiday night. At 1:30 AM Eastern US Time. Words cannot express the level of amusement I am feeling.
  • They are accurately measuring what they set out to measure. The top 1000 corporate websites. And most top 1000 corporations are Microsserfs these days. No suprise here.

    But then Martin Marietta Materials and Warnaco running IIS6 doesn't mean squat. They ain't exactly prime destinations on the Internet so IIS can probably carry the load well enough, and if it is down a few minutes each Sunday morning for the weekly reboot who really notices.

    As for the Windows e-commerce sites, they pretty much speak for
    • * 70% of statistical survey are sponsored by corporations.
      * 89% of statistical survey are lies to serve a purpose.
      * People lie 65% the time.
      * 63% of people lie for financial gains.
      * Microsoft is 10% evil.
      * I lie 16.66% of the time.
  • This is a case where a useful critique of Netcraft's methodology could be made, and the survey (and the statements from Port80) instead is flatly ludicrous.

    What's frustrating is that this is not a partisan issue. It's a question of what tools people are using to do what jobs in the world of web serving, and, by extension, what that means for the web as a whole.

    In addition to all the other complaints about Port80's crappy methodology, it seems relevant to point out that in the world of the web, sites with

  • A good methodology (Score:5, Informative)

    by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:26AM (#7575516) Homepage
    If you are conducting a survey to find out what is the "best of the best" in server software, why survey Family Dollar Store? Or Land 'O Lakes? You should be choosing technically savvy, solution neutral companies are likely to choose the best. These are the actual companies that have a big web presence and you would not expect them to choose a platform which would affect their bottom line badly... As opposed to Sears Roebuck, whose online presence can be compared to Amazon's retail presence. Would we ask Amazon how to organize endcaps? Let's pick a few technically adept companies at random here...

    Amazon - Apache
    AT&T - Netscape
    Bell South - Apache
    Cisco - Unix
    Dell - IIS5
    Earthlink - Netscape
    E-Bay - IIS4
    HP - Apache
    Intel - IIS6
    Lucent - Netscape
    Motorola - Apache
    National Semiconductor - Netscape
    Nextel - Netscape
    Qualcomm - Netscape
    PC Connection - IIS5

    I can't survey any more companies, because Port80's IIS6 server is slashdotted. However, if is apparent from this data that nearly 1/3rd of all websites that count are hosted on Netscape platforms. Apache and IIS share 1/4th each, and Cisco's odd unix variant wrapps up the rest.

    Personally I'm amazed that Netscape is holding on to a lead... I would have expected them to be out of the running long ago. I'll have to check them out.

    • Re:A good methodology (Score:4, Interesting)

      by servoled ( 174239 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:38AM (#7575552)
      This is too small of a sample to produce meaningful results. Also some of these companies may be running a certain platform based on business deals made way back in the day and are reluctant to make the investment needed to completely replace their infrastructure (which may explain the strong presence of netscape, who knows).

      There are really too many factors involved to simply choose a number of websites and determine which is the best server software based upon what the majority of those sites are running.
  • Everyone is crying foul... "IIS biased". But how does making a larger % of the web look like it's running IIS make them $1 more money? Maybe IIS is 20% of the web, maybe it's 70%, but unless *I* am running IIS, I'm not going to pay them money.

    Can someone explain the bias?

  • Cheap and flashy graphics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ChaosDiscord ( 4913 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:28AM (#7575523) Homepage Journal

    I'll ignore for the moment the question of the quality of their data. I'm sure others will endlessly debate it (and I'll probably join in). Let's look at something else: The quality of their presentation.

    First, let's take a look at the most recent Netcraft server survey [netcraft.com]. Let's see, clean display. The scale grid is subtle and doesn't draw attention to itself, but makes it easy to see exactly where a line falls. There is little wasted pixel data. It's easy to see trends and make comparisons. For the curious the exact numbers for the last two samples is listed (regrettably one two samples are listed). The graph labels the data it shows ("Market Share for Top Servers Across All Domains August 1995 - November 2003") leaving the reader to form his own opinions. On the down side, the scale confusingly marks 7% increments and the yellow line for Netscape/SunOne almost disappears into the background. Still, a well above average for graph. Definately room to improve, but better than most people expect to see.

    Now let's example the Port80 server survey [port80software.com]. Wow, what a difference. The grid is a much more dominant element. The 3d effect means that bars further in the back appear taller (by up to 15 pixels, or about 7%) and makes it hard to compare a specific data point against the scale. The complexity of the 3d bars complicates things, the "top" of the bar is actually larger than the month to month shift in the numbers. The "area" of the bars implies size (intellectually you know it isn't, but your gut says otherwise), this means that the largely obscured middle bars (Netscape and Apache) seem smaller. Ultimately bars are the wrong choice, we're examining points over time (suggesting a line chart), not clusters of data. The chart is labeled with a conclusion ("Microsoft IIS Maintains Dominance Of the Corporate Web Server Market"), suggesting interpretations to the reader. On the up side, they provide heavily broken up information for the most recent sample point (regrettably it's a graphic). They include a worthless pie chart. If you want to show market share a line chart showing historical data would be much more enlightening.

    Conclusion? Port80's graphs suck. Hard. It's a stunning example of how not to create high quality graphs. The creators need to be beaten with copies of Tufte's information display books [edwardtufte.com] until they get it. This is the sort of amateur crap I expect on PowerPoint slides from people more interested in being cool than being useful, or perhaps from the graphics department at USA Today. As an engineer I'm disappointed.

  • All year, except for half of it. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Froggy ( 92010 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:30AM (#7575526) Homepage
    Anyone else notice that the spokesman for Port80 claims that they have been running the survey all year "except for a period between February and June"? That means they've been running for about eleven months, except for the five months when they weren't running...

    I don't think they have much in the way of credibility, even without their transparent bias. They seem to have a creative way with arithmetic.

  • we have arived. (Score:3, Funny)

    by hsidhu ( 184286 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:30AM (#7575527) Homepage
    Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e31'

    [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Timeout expired

    /includes/Referer.asp, line 7

    we live in an era where you can market shades to a blind man, and thats what these folks are doing. leave them alone to make innovative products like ServerMask.

  • ./ effect (Score:5, Funny)

    by ryanw ( 131814 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:42AM (#7575563)
    Port80Software has been slashdotted. As of 23:41 MTN Standardtime Nov 26th, 2003.. their box is completely down.

    Wonder what they're running ...

  • Wow (Score:3, Funny)

    by Micah ( 278 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:47AM (#7575583) Homepage Journal
    Their wonderful IIS sure didn't stand up well to a Slashdotting.

    Remind me again why I don't switch from Apache?

  • Conflict of interest. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Shanep ( 68243 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:58AM (#7575622) Homepage
    "Netcraft is biased"

    "develops software products to enhance the security, performance and user experience of Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server."

    Entities who could be accused of having a conflict of interest, ought not bother at all with statements like these. It will only end up making them loose integrity.

  • And they are running.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by MavEtJu ( 241979 ) <slashdot&mavetju,org> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:17AM (#7575689) Homepage
    We detect that www.port80software.com is running Yes we are using ServerMask.

    Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 07:15:24 GMT
    Server: Yes we are using ServerMask
    Set-Cookie: It works on cookies too=8, SM130P.5Q..NS12H57M64MP00.N2356; path=/
    Cache-control: private
    Content-Length: 21881
    Connection: keep-alive
    Connection: Keep-Alive
    Content-Type: text/html

  • Numbers look legit, but of questionable value. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ChaosDiscord ( 4913 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:48AM (#7575762) Homepage Journal

    They list the 995 sites they include (they're using the Fortune 1,000, and (looking at some of the earlier reports), apparently 5 Fortune 1,000 companies don't have sites. (If they're still Slashdotted, you can download the pages from Google's cache. start here [google.com].)

    A bit of quick Perl hackery pulls back the following values, roughly in line with what they report. The second column is actual sites found.

    54.0% 537 Microsoft-IIS
    18.2% 182 Netscape-Enterprise
    16.1% 161 Apache
    _3.6% _36 OTHER
    _3.4% _34 IBM_HTTP_SERVER
    _2.7% _27 UNKNOWN
    _1.8% _18 Lotus-Domino
    _____ 995 TOTAL

    That said, I doubt the usefulness of the survey. It's a survey of Fortune 1,000 companies. These are often companies whose web presence is minimal. What does a giant holding company need with a web site? Heck, five of the companies didn't have any site at all! Of those sites that exist, many lack any sort of complexity (say, thousands of pages, or lots of dynamic pages). Simply put, many of these sites would run fine an almost anything, they don't represent Hard Work. I'm a lot more interested in what Google and Yahoo choose to run than in what the Radian Group and the Kiewit run.

    Now Netcraft does have the problem they cite: Netcraft weights everyone equally. Perhaps that introduces bias. Perhaps we should select a set of sites that is high bandwidth, typically has at least some dynamic systems in place (say, to handle selling accounts), and is a popular target for hackers? How about porn sites? Porn operators have a hard job, thanks to Smutcraft [smutcraft.net] you can see what they run.

    Second, it looks like they've chosen one site for each company. For Amerco, for example, they chose UHaul.com running IIS. Reasonable enough (UHaul is part of Amerco), but it's interesting that they skipped amerco.com (running Apache). Not a great example, surely (especially since uhaul.com is certainly doing more real work than the very thin amerco.com), but it shows that there is a selection process of some sort, and any selection process risks introducing bias.

  • Sites Vs Servers? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @03:06AM (#7575827) Journal
    So basically, they're using a (questionably biased) survey of "servers" running IIS Vs others.

    No excuse me, but wouldn't be able to run 100 sites on an apache box without problems beat the pants off having to run 100 seperate IIS boxen?

    I mean, if say, 70% of the websites in the world were to be run on 30% of the servers, I'd say those 30% of servers had something over the other 70%...

  • Perspective (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rduke15 ( 721841 ) <rduke15.gmail@com> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @03:41AM (#7575972)
    There is not much point in bashing one or the other survey as being biased. Of course they are (whether intentionally or not), since a single survey will only ever show a single perspective.

    - Netcraft shows servers by hostnames
    - Port80 shows servers for US Fortune 1000 companies

    Both are interesting (even though the Port80 graphs suck [slashdot.org], and their software is broken [slashdot.org]).

    But both are meaningless by themselves if you want a serious view of server software usage.

    Adding Netcraft's SSL survey (which isn't free) would help to get yet another perspective.

    Then a breakdown by IP addresses instead of hostnames would be interesting, but Netcraft doesn't seem to publish that.

    And what about non-US Fortune-N companies?

    And web servers whose main business relies on the web (as this post suggests [slashdot.org])?

    And stuff you definitely cannot get like the sites with the most traffic? (maybe you could get "sites-with-a-lot-of-traffic-which-do-banner- advertizing-with-major-banner-advertizing- companies").

    If you take the survey for what it is, it's interesting. Just don't expect it to tell you more than it can.

    Port80 is not about market share, it's about market share in US-based Fortune 1000 companies this summer. A very limited, but nonetheless interesting survey (if you care for surveys, that is).

    Who will do a survey of slashdotted sites? Shouldn't be too difficult. Anybody bored in some rainy region of the globe?

  • The TRUTH is ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jerry ( 6400 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @04:36AM (#7576131)
    that Microsoft's web server installs across ALL TOP DOMAINS have dropped to their 1997 levels, while Apache has almost doubled their 1997 levels. No amount of MS PR cash can change that fact.

    Hiding your IIS server behind a server mask or mis-identifying it as an Apache server isn't going to stop a virus or trojan... they can't read. They just try the exploit and if it works... it works. Not only has that been happening a lot on IIS servers, and MS software in general, the rates of infections/infectors seem to be growing... which explains why Apache had another large jump since last month, and MS has fallen by almost the same amount.

    It's one thing to have your web site broken into, its another thing to pay to have it broken into. That's what you're doing when you buy & install MS web servers and the anti-viral software which supposedly will 'protect' them. It's obvious something is not working....

  • Fortune 1000 sites are not the busiest? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chrome ( 3506 ) <`ten.suodneputs' `ta' `emorhc'> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @04:57AM (#7576181) Homepage Journal
    I don't know for sure, and I don't have any data to back up my assertion, but I have a strong feeling that Fortune 1000 sites are not the busiest sites out there.

    For instance, a Fortune 1000 server probably only serves a few sites.

    Most people running server farms doing mass hosting can serve tens of thousands of sites off a single server running Apache (or Zeus, etc).

    I really doubt the relevance of this, especially in light of the fact that a lot of large companies will have a "MS software only" policy these days.

    But, this is all conjecture of course.

  • Real problems with methodology (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DoctorNathaniel ( 459436 ) <nathaniel.tagg@gma i l .com> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @06:47AM (#7576424) Homepage
    In skimming threads, it looks like people have missed the real problem: that the have pre-selected there sample.

    There sample is the servers of the "fortune 1000 companies". Now, I don't know how the Fortune 1000 chooses it's companies, but I'll bet they don't choose those companies that have succeeded due to good IT choices. Microsoft will be on the list.. but how much money does Google make? Is it on the list?

    Moreover, and this is the really important point, they are completely ignoring every other kind of site. Government, educational, research, NGO, military, etc, etc. It ignores all the sites that don't make any money but are vitally important.

    OK, they're just doing the study to prove that _companies_ use MSII. But even that's bad: it only proves that BIG companies use microsloth. This may be an intelligent decision for big companies, but not for small ones.

    So, in general, the only thing that Port80 really says in it's study is that big, rich companies use Microsoft. This implies no causality: few of these companies make money from the web.

    The Netcraft survey shows that PEOPLE use Apache.. and I think that's much more interesting.

    ---Nathaniel

  • Lets see... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bruns ( 75399 ) <[moc.tibm2] [ta] [snurb]> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @11:08AM (#7577341) Homepage
    So lets see, they want to sell us a product which supposedly increases the security of IIS boxes, without even actually increasing the security in the process, but rather mangling the headers to look like Apache, in the hope someone will skip over it.

    Since when do the web server scanning viruses actually check the headers to see what type of server it is?

    I would think that someone who was scanning for vulnerable web servers would notice "This is a server" or "Yes we are using ServerMask" quickly and realize that someone is playing a game of hide the IIS server. Thats one hell of a big fucking redflag.

    None of their products actually offer any *real* security from what I see. They just hide the errors and obvious from normal people. It won't stop someone from nmaping the IIS box and see that its running Windows NT/2k/2k3. It won't stop those lovely Windows based viruses that scan for exploitable webservers.

    Lets not forget what happens when SQL/ODBC errors pop up and completely give away that your an IIS slave. Its so freakin easy to cause a server's script to throw back errors for analysis.

    If anything, they are saying that, "Yeah, IIS sucks, look how we can make IIS pretend to be like the much more secure and powerful Apache web server."

    Why not just run Apache in the first place? You don't have to pay money to a third party just to change basic configurations, and you get the most secure web server in existance.

    It seems painfully obvious.

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