Web Server study on the 100 oldest domains

This really didn’t start out as a mini research project…

It started, because I am reading this great book by Syngress called: Penetration Tester’s Open Source Toolkit.  The book is about how to use freely available tools to conduct penetration tests on a network.  It contains tons of valuable information, including source code of a few very useful utilities.  The one that caught my eye was a website banner grabber.  The program reads in a text file containing websites that you want to pull the banner from.  For each entry, the returned banner is output to the screen.  The banner contains identifcation of the webserver software running for that site.

So, I took the C# sourcecode in the book and compiled it in Visual Studio.  After using the program successfully with a data file consisting of a couple of sites – it was time to find a list of domains to use with my new little utility.  A quick Google search turned up a list of the first 100 domain names (that are still active) in the order they were registered.

Here is the resulting data:


3/15/1985 symbolics.com Apache
4/24/1985 bbn.com Apache/2.0.52 (Unix) mod_perl/1.99_16 Perl/v5.8.4 mod_ssl/2.0.52 OpenSSL/0.9.7d PHP/5.0.3
5/24/1985 think.com Oracle-Application-Server-10g/10.1.2.0.2 Oracle-HTTP-Server OracleAS-Web-Cache-10g/10.1.2.0.2 (N;ecid=72058190532876332,0)
7/11/1985 mcc.com Not active
9/30/1985 dec.com Apache
11/7/1985 northrop.com Not active
1/9/1986 xerox.com AkamaiGHost
1/17/1986 sri.com Netscape-Enterprise/6.0
3/3/1986 hp.com Apache
3/5/1986 bellcore.com Netscape-Enterprise/6.0
3/19/1986 ibm.com IBM_HTTP_Server
3/19/1986 sun.com Sun-Java-System-Web-Server/6.1
3/25/1986 intel.com AkamaiGHost
3/25/1986 ti.com Apache/1.3.12 (Unix)
4/25/1986 att.com Netscape-Enterprise/4.1
5/8/1986 tek.com Netscape-Enterprise/6.0
5/8/1986 gmr.com Not active
7/10/1986 fmc.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
7/10/1986 ub.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
8/5/1986 grebyn.com Apache/2.0.40 (Red Hat Linux)
8/5/1986 stargate.com Microsoft-IIS/5.0
8/5/1986 isc.com Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 SP1
8/5/1986 bell-atl.com Netscape-Enterprise/6.0
8/5/1986 ge.com Sun-ONE-Web-Server/6.1
8/5/1986 nsc.com Sun-ONE-Web-Server/6.1
9/2/1986 boeing.com Sun-ONE-Web-Server/6.1
9/18/1986 itcorp.com Apache/2.2.0 (Linux/SUSE)
9/29/1986 siemens.com IBM_HTTP_Server/2.0.47.1 Apache/2.0.47 (Unix)
10/18/1986 pyramid.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
10/27/1986 mentor.com AkamaiGHost
10/27/1986 vortex.com Apache/1.3.27 (Unix)
10/27/1986 alphacdc.com Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) mod_require_host/2.3 PHP/4.0.1pl2
10/27/1986 bdm.com Apache/1.3.33 (Win32)
10/27/1986 nec.com httpd+ssl/kbn
10/27/1986 fluke.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
10/27/1986 rosemount.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
10/27/1986 inmet.com Not active
10/27/1986 kesmai.com Not active
10/27/1986 ray.com Not active
11/5/1986 alcoa.com Microsoft-IIS/5.0
11/5/1986 gte.com Netscape-Enterprise/6.0
11/17/1986 amd.com AkamaiGHost
11/17/1986 adobe.com Apache
11/17/1986 octopus.com Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) PHP/5.1.2
11/17/1986 das.com Microsoft-IIS/5.0
11/17/1986 teltone.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
11/17/1986 data-io.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
11/17/1986 portal.com Oracle-Application-Server-10g OracleAS-Web-Cache/10.1.2.2 (N;ecid=523480612223,0)
12/11/1986 sq.com AkamaiGHost
12/11/1986 quad.com Apache/2.0.46 (Red Hat)
12/11/1986 peregrine.com Microsoft-IIS/5.0
12/11/1986 convergent.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
12/11/1986 dg.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
12/11/1986 ccur.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
12/11/1986 unisys.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
12/11/1986 amdahl.com Netscape-Enterprise/4.1
12/11/1986 tandy.com Not active
12/11/1986 tti.com Not active
12/11/1986 3com.com Sun-ONE-Web-Server/6.1
12/11/1986 ci.com Sun-ONE-Web-Server/6.1
1/19/1987 spdcc.com Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) DAV/2 PHP/4.3.10-16 mod_ssl/2.0.54 OpenSSL/0.9.7e
1/19/1987 cts.com ConcentricHost-Ashurbanipal/1.8 (Concentric(R))
1/19/1987 cgi.com Netscape-Enterprise/6.0
2/19/1987 apple.com Apache/1.3.33 (Darwin) PHP/4.3.10
3/4/1987 nma.com Apache/1.3.29 (Unix) PHP/4.3.11 mod_ssl/2.8.16 OpenSSL/0.9.6b
3/4/1987 prime.com Apache/2.0
4/4/1987 philips.com AkamaiGHost
4/23/1987 tic.com Apache/1.3.27 (Unix)
4/23/1987 vine.com Apache/2.0.55 (FreeBSD) DAV/2 PHP/4.4.2
4/23/1987 kai.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
4/23/1987 datacube.com Sun-ONE-Web-Server/6.1
4/30/1987 ncr.com Microsoft-IIS/5.0
5/14/1987 cisco.com Apache/2.0
5/14/1987 rdl.com Microsoft-IIS/5.0
5/20/1987 slb.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
5/27/1987 parcplace.com Apache/1.3.20 (Unix)
5/27/1987 utc.com Netscape-Enterprise/4.1
6/26/1987 ide.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
7/9/1987 trw.com Netscape-Enterprise/6.0
7/13/1987 unipress.com Apache/2.0.50 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.50 OpenSSL/0.9.6b PHP/4.3.8
7/27/1987 dupont.com Netscape-Enterprise/4.1
7/27/1987 lockheed.com Netscape-Enterprise/6.0
7/28/1987 rosetta.com Apache/1.3.29 (Darwin) DAV/1.0.3 PHP/4.3.2
8/18/1987 toad.com Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) PHP/5.1.4 mod_python/2.7.8 Python/1.5.2 mod_ssl/2.8.12 OpenSSL/0.9.6b DAV/1.0.3 mod_perl/1.26 mod_throttle/3.1.2
8/31/1987 quick.com Not active
9/3/1987 sco.com Apache
9/3/1987 allied.com Microsoft-IIS/5.0
9/3/1987 dsc.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
9/22/1987 wlk.com Apache/1.3.3 Cobalt (Unix) (Red Hat/Linux)
9/22/1987 gene.com BIG-IP
9/22/1987 spectra.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
9/22/1987 kccs.com Not active
9/30/1987 mentat.com Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) (Red Hat/Linux)
10/14/1987 wyse.com Microsoft-IIS/6.0
11/2/1987 cfg.com Apache/1.3.31 (Unix)
11/9/1987 marble.com Apache
11/16/1987 entity.com Apache/1.3.37 (Unix) mod_throttle/3.1.2 DAV/1.0.3 mod_fastcgi/2.4.2 mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a PHP/4.4.4 mod_ssl/2.8.22 OpenSSL/0.9.7e
11/16/1987 cayman.com Apache/2.0.46 (Red Hat)
11/24/1987 ksr.com Apache
11/30/1987 nynexst.com Not active


So what are the percentages of web server software running on some of the oldest websites?

Apache: 32%
Microsoft IIS: 24%
Netscape-Enterprise: 13%
Sun-Web-Server: 7%
AkamaiGHost: 6%
IBM_HTTP_SERVER: 2%
Oracle Application Server: 2%
Other: 3%
No Web Site: 11%