🔀 What is Nginx?

NGINX is a reliable open-source web server

Nginx is an open-source web server that uses an asynchronous, event-driven architecture. It was originally built for HTTP caching, later expanded to support reverse proxy, HTTP load balancing, and mail protocols such as IMAP4, POP3, and SMTP.

Released in October 2014, Nginx is used by large companies like Google, Adobe, Netflix, and WordPress because it can handle thousands of concurrent connections.

⚙️ How Nginx works

NGINX works similarly to other servers

Nginx follows an asynchronous processing model, unlike the sequential processing used by traditional web servers.

• Each process has multiple worker connections to handle requests.
• Worker connections pass requests to worker processes, which forward them to the master process.
• With this model, one worker connection can handle up to 1024 requests at once, enabling Nginx to serve thousands of requests efficiently.

🔥 Nginx features

NGINX offers powerful features for web development

Nginx provides many standout features:

• ⚡ Handles over 10,000 concurrent connections with low memory usage.
• 📂 Serves static files and file indexing.
• 🔄 Load balancing and reverse proxy with caching.
• 🚀 Supports FastCGI, uWSGI, SCGI, and Memcached.
• 🛠️ Modular architecture with automatic gzip compression.
• 🔐 SSL/TLS encryption support.
• 🔀 URL rewrites using regular expressions.
• 🌐 WebSocket support and connection limits.
• 📡 IPv6 compatibility.

⚖️ Nginx vs Apache

Compared to Apache, NGINX has many advantages

🖥️ Apache server:

• Processes requests using a forked threaded model or keep-alive.
• Handles both static and dynamic content.

🌍 Nginx server:

• Uses a non-blocking event loop.
• Serves static content more efficiently than Apache.
• Faster request handling and better resource usage.
• Requires a separate processor for dynamic content.

🔎 How to check if a website uses Nginx

You can use available tools to check if a website runs Nginx

You can check if a website runs Nginx by inspecting HTTP headers:

1. Open the website in Chrome.
2. Press Ctrl + Shift + I or F12 to open DevTools.
3. Switch to the Network tab.
4. Select any request and inspect Headers.

You can also use tools like Pingdom or GTmetrix to check.

🎯 Conclusion

Nginx has become one of the most popular web servers thanks to high performance, the ability to handle thousands of concurrent connections, and powerful features. Whether you need to serve static content, balance load, or run a reverse proxy, Nginx is a strong choice. Hopefully this guide helps you understand Nginx and how it works. If you are considering an optimized web server for your project, try Nginx and explore its benefits! 🚀😊