If you are looking to know what Nginx is then this short and quick article will certainly clear your doubts on the subject. So Nginx is an open source software exclusively for internet servers, which was released especially for HTTP browsing.

Nowadays it also works as an HTTP load balancer, reverse proxy, and also email proxy for POP 3, IMAP and SMTP protocols.

The launch of the same was in October 2004, and the creator of this software was Igor Sysoev. He started the creation of the project in 2002 to try to solve a problem known as C10K. Where your biggest and main challenge was managing 10,000 simultaneous connections (at the same time).

Know that currently there are even more connections, and that a server manages it smoothly. And precisely for this simple reason, it provides its users with an excellent asynchronous architecture, which makes it one of the most reliable types of servers today. Both in terms of scale, performance and speed.

As Nginx can easily support several very high speed connections, the vast majority of very high traffic websites such as Netflix, Google, Adobe, WordPress and others are already using it.

How it works?

Now that you know what Nginx is, we couldn't fail to mention how it works, but before we get into that topic, you first need to know how an internet server operates in practice.

The server works like this, every time someone is browsing the web, whether on social networks, or doing research in search engines, and when he finds what he wants and decides to click on the link. He ends up making a request.

So when requesting to load a page on the internet, the browser will contact the website server. Then the server will search for the files that were requested and simply deliver them to the browser.

In case you didn't know, traditional web servers create an individual Thread for each of the requests, but know that Nginx doesn't work that way.

As we mentioned earlier, it has excellent performance, and also an asynchronous, event-oriented architecture. Which means that lookalike threads are managed by a process called worker. Which in turn each worker process has smaller units, which are known as worker connections.

So this entire unit is fully responsible for handling all theadder requests, as worker connections take requests only to a worker process, which is then sent to the master process. Finally, the master process shows the result of the request made.

In a way this may even seem simple, but know that a single worker connection is capable of handling up to 1,024 requests. And precisely for this reason, the Nginx server is fully capable of handling millions of requests without the slightest problem. This is also another big reason for websites that have a lot of traffic to use this technology.

Apache vs Nginx:

Of virtually all web servers, Apache is the most popular of them all, and it is also practically the main adversary of the Nginx server. Apache came into existence in the 90s and also has a huge amount of users all over the world.

But if you are going to create an online project, and you are still in doubt about which type and the best server to use in your project, check out our quick comparison between the two, below:

Performance and performance:

Both 2 servers have the same speed, but Nginx can easily run 1,000 connections of static content at the same time, this is 2x faster than Apache. And still using much less memory. The Nginx server in this case is certainly the best option.

OS Compatibility:

By no means is compatibility one of the details that should be taken into account when choosing a server. In this case both can operate with many operating systems, which in turn support the UNIX system.

But unfortunately in this regard the performance and performance of the Nginx type server on Windows is not as good as on other platforms.

Support:

It doesn't matter if you are a beginner or an advanced user, everyone without exception needs a place or community on the internet to help each other out when unexpected problems arise.

Both offer support via email, and also have a forum on Stack Overflow. Unfortunately, Apache leaves much to be desired in terms of support that comes from the company itself, which is the Apache Foundation.

Concluding:

As you can read, Ngnix is an internet server that also works as a reverse proxy, load balancer and also as a mail proxy. The structure of all their software is all asynchronous, and all event driven. Which in turn enables a large number of concurrent requests.

We absolutely cannot fail to mention that the Nginx type server is highly scalable, which means that your work grows along with the increase in the volume of traffic.

Both Apache and Ngnix are certainly the best web servers today, now you just have to choose which one you want to use in your online projects. Success in your choice?