Nginx

Nginx

Original author(s)	Igor Sysoev
Developer(s)	Nginx, Inc.
Initial release	4 October 2004 (2004-10-04)
Stable release	1.10.1 (31 May 2016 (2016-05-31)) [±]
Preview release	1.11.0 (24 May 2016 (2016-05-24)) [±]
Development status	Active
Written in	C
Operating system	BSD variants, HP-UX, IBM AIX, Linux, OS X, Solaris, Windows, and other *nix flavors,
Type	Web server, reverse/mail proxy server
License	2-clause BSD
Website	<strong%20class= "error"><span%20class="scribunto-error"%20id="mw-scribunto-error-2">Lua%20error%20in%20Module:Wd%20at%20line%20405:%20invalid%20escape%20sequence%20near%20'"^'. http://<strong%20class="error"><span%20class="scribunto-error"%20id="mw-scribunto-error-2">Lua%20error%20in%20Module:Wd%20at%20line%20405:%20invalid%20escape%20sequence%20near%20'"^'.

Nginx (pronounced "engine x") is a web server. It can act as a reverse proxy server for HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, POP3, and IMAP protocols, as well as a load balancer and an HTTP cache.

Created by Igor Sysoev in 2002, Nginx runs on Unix, Linux, BSD variants, OS X, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and Windows. Released under the terms of a BSD-like license, Nginx is free and open source software.

Features

Nginx can be deployed to serve dynamic HTTP content on the network using FastCGI, SCGI handlers for scripts, WSGI application servers or Phusion Passenger modules, and it can serve as a software load balancer.

Nginx uses an asynchronous event-driven approach to handling requests, similar to Apache HTTP Server Event MPM model. Nginx's modular event-driven architecture can provide more predictable performance under high loads.

According to Netcraft's October 2015 Web Server Survey, Nginx was found to be the second most widely used web server across all "active" sites (15.33% of surveyed sites) and for the top million busiest sites (23.66% of surveyed sites). According to W3Techs, it was used by 29.7% of the top 1 million websites, 39.5% of the top 100,000 websites, and by 47.6% of the top 10,000 websites. According to BuiltWith, it is used on 36.6% of the top 10,000 websites, and its growth within the top 10k, 100k and 1 million segments increased. Wikipedia uses Nginx as its SSL termination proxy. As of OpenBSD release 5.2 (1 November 2012), Nginx became part of the OpenBSD base system, providing an alternative to the system's fork of Apache 1.3, which it was intended to replace, but it was later replaced by OpenBSD's own httpd(8).

HTTP proxy and Web server features

• Ability to handle more than 10,000 simultaneous connections with a low memory footprint (~2.5 MB per 10k inactive HTTP keep-alive connections)
• Handling of static files, index files and auto-indexing
• Reverse proxy with caching
• Load balancing with in-band health checks
• Fault tolerance
• TLS/SSL with SNI and OCSP stapling support, via OpenSSL.
• FastCGI, SCGI, uWSGI support with caching
• Name- and IP address-based virtual servers
• IPv6-compatible
• HTTP/2 and SPDY protocol support
• WebSockets and HTTP/1.1 Upgrade (101 Switching Protocols)
• FLV and MP4 streaming
• Web page access authentication
• gzip compression and decompression
• URL rewriting
• Custom logging with on-the-fly gzip compression
• Concurrent connection limiting
• Request processing rate limiting
• Bandwidth throttling
• Server Side Includes
• IP address-based geolocation
• User tracking
• WebDAV
• XSLT data processing
• Embedded Perl scripting

Mail proxy features

• TLS/SSL support
• STARTTLS support
• SMTP, POP3, and IMAP proxy
• Authentication using an external HTTP server

Other features include upgrading executable and configuration without client connections loss, and a module-based architecture with both core and third-party module support.

The paid NGINX Plus product includes additional features such as advanced load balancing and access to an expanded suite of metrics for performance monitoring.

History

NGINX, Inc.

Type	Private
Industry	Technology
Founded	2011
Headquarters	Russia
Key people	Gus Robertson (CEO), Igor Sysoev (CTO)
Products	Web servers
Website	nginx.com

Igor Sysoev commenced development on Nginx in 2002. Originally, Nginx was developed to fill the needs of websites including Rambler, for which it was serving 500 million requests per day by September 2008.

NGINX, Inc. was founded in July 2011 by Sysoev to provide commercial products and support for the software.

Its principal place of business is San Francisco, California. The company offered commercial support in February 2012, and paid NGINX Plus subscription in August 2013. An investment of $10 million led by New Enterprise Associates was reported in October 2013. Other investors reportedly included Aaron Levie. WordPress developer Automattic and Content Delivery Network provider MaxCDN have become funding partners for an update to Google's SPDY version 3.1, slated for early 2014.

The company announced commercial support options for companies using Nginx in production. Support packages focus on installation, configuration, performance improvement, etc. As part of the support NGINX Inc. offers "rapid response and resolution of problems and incidents, including emergency bug fixes and prioritized development". Support includes proactive notifications about major changes, security patches, updates and patches.

NGINX Inc. also offers consulting services to assist customers in custom configuration or adding additional features. The consulting and support is delivered by the original creators and developers of Nginx.

The company has now raised $33 million. In October 2011, Nginx has raised $3 million from BV Capital, Runa Capital and MSD Capital, Michael Dell‘s venture fund. In October 2013, the company has raised a $10 million Series B round led by New Enterprise Associates. This round also includes full participation by the company’s existing investors, including Series A investors, as well as participation from Aaron Levie, CEO and founder of Box.com. In December 2014, Nginx has raised a $20 million Series B1 round led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from e.ventures (formerly BV Capital), Runa Capital, Index Ventures and Nginx’s own CEO Gus Robertson.

Version	Original release date	Latest version	Release date	Status
Old version, no longer supported: 0.5	2006-12-04	0.5.38	2009-09-14	Legacy
Old version, no longer supported: 0.6	2007-06-14	0.6.39	2009-09-14	Legacy
Old version, no longer supported: 0.7	2008-05-19	0.7.69	2011-07-19	Legacy
Old version, no longer supported: 0.8	2009-06-02	0.8.55	2011-07-19	Legacy
Old version, no longer supported: 1.0	2011-04-12	1.0.15	2012-04-12	Legacy
Old version, no longer supported: 1.2	2012-04-23	1.2.9	2013-05-13	Legacy
Old version, no longer supported: 1.4	2013-04-24	1.4.7	2014-03-18	Legacy
Old version, no longer supported: 1.6	2014-04-24	1.6.3	2015-04-07	Legacy
Old version, no longer supported: 1.8	2015-04-21	1.8.1	2016-01-26	Legacy
Current stable version: 1.9	2015-04-28	1.9.15	2016-04-19	Mainline
Current stable version: 1.10	2016-04-26	1.10.0	2016-04-26	Stable
Legend: Old version Older version, still supported Latest version Latest preview version Future release

See also

• Comparison of web server software
• Web accelerator
• URL redirection § nginx rewrite

External links

• Corporate website