What is a web server? The primary function of a web server is to deliver web pages on the request to clients. This means delivery of HTML documents and any additional content that may be included by a document, such as images, style sheets and scripts. So how does this work exactly? Below is a simple diagram to describe the process:
This is simple example in which your machine is running a Web Browser (IE, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) and it makes a request to a certain page. It hits the server machine which is the web server and sends back the requested page in the form of content.
You can actually install Web Server software (like Apache) on your personal computer to turn it into a web server as well. So just like the client, you can have a Web Server system and a Web Server application.
Over the past few years we have seen the use of cloud technologies come to the forefront. All of these servers are stored online in this virtual "cloud". During the course of this class, we got some exposure to Amazon Web Services (AWS) which allowed us to create virtual web servers that could house our websites. This is convenient as there is no physical server box to maintain. All of the load balancing and support is done by the service provider (in this case AWS). Cloud services and mobile are getting a lot of focus now. Many don't want the hassle of setup and maintenance costs that go along with having their own servers. It's much more convenient to just use a cloud offering. Still, I don't think the physical hardware is going away anytime soon. Until cloud computing really takes off, it's probably our best option at the moment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_server
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-server.htm
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