Thursday, February 19, 2009

The age of embedding Web-servers

The last period witnessed a "web-server-mania". Although I'll talk about running my pc as a server but this is not the reason why I say that.
About running my PC as a server it is not very sophisticated and can be done, just five systematic steps
  • Obtain static IP address.
  • Open port 80 (The port responsible for receiving HTTP requests).
    1. Adjust local firewall settings (to let HTTP requrests pass in).
    2. Do port forwarding (To open the port from the network and direct requests to the proper computer - To do it I downloaded the manual of my Router and searched for "port forwarding").
    3. Check the port is opened.
  • Install the server software on the pc; normally the word "Server" refers to two meanings the first: the Computer running as a server and the second: The software that translates clients' requests and reply by suitable responses (like what the browser does on the client side).
  • Register for a dynamic name service; that maps a certain DNS to your static IP address.
But the process even after its success is full of disadvantages, this article which summarizes the drawbacks of hosting on your own PC.


Back to the main thing that made me write this post ..
A Japanese Company called FreeBit had announced an iphone application that "server-ize" the iphone ...

 Yes once this application is installed on the iphone, all PCs can access it exactly like a web server.
Check this post for more information.

From the ability to "attach" the server on my PC to "embedding" it to a pocket device will change many concepts or at least make them more flexible and different from long age they were.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

interesting post .. really pcs and mobiles are integrating rapidly.
But for now , i believe running a server on iphone and such smart phones is just an overhead on performance :D