Boa (Webserver)

Boa is a free, slim web server which is among other things for use in embedded systems. Originally posted by Paul Phillips, he is looked after at the moment of Larry Doolittle and Jon Nelson. The server is in contrast to most other web servers, such as Apache Web Server, with only one thread. This, and his minimalist approach, it is predestined for use on less powerful hardware. In addition to the delivery of static content Boa also dominates the delivery of dynamic content. For this purpose, can be connected, which processes user inputs and outputs generated by dynamic CGI third party software.

Performance

Since server hardware is relatively cheap nowadays plays the ability Boas on very low hardware yet with good performance to run practically only in the field of embedded systems play a role. This ability means but at the same time that boa on faster hardware static content much faster, ie with a lower latency and higher throughput, delivers as other web server. This makes it ideal for use on high-traffic websites, for example, to deliver images.

For this reason, among others, the use of very heavy traffic in the English speaking sites Slashdot and the Boa Web server to deliver to Fotolog graphics.

Limitations

Boa has the following limitations: (as of 2/2010 ):

• No access control functions ( HTTP authentication, etc.)
• No chroot option ( in planning)
• No Server Side Includes (SSI can not be reconciled with the objectives in terms of performance in line. )
• No SSL support - but there is a patch for version 0.94.13, which enables SSL, alternatively: Stunnel ( a generic SSL tunnel )
• No support for "extra path" in CGI scripts ( CGI PATH_INFO Umgebugnsvariable )