Tenon Intersystems today announced WebTen 2.0, an upgrade to
its industrial-strength, high-performance Apache Web server for Power Macs.
According to the vendor, a new “supercache” feature boosts the Macintosh
Web server performance leader by more than 400%. Tenon claims that WebTen,
based on the latest Apache 1.2.4, is the fastest Web server on the Power
Macintosh, sustaining over 700 hits per second, or over 60 million
connections a day. In addition to its improved performance, WebTen 2.0 adds
new features including multihoming SSL 3.0, multihoming FTP, NFS, and DNS.
“The Macintosh is widely accepted as the platform of choice for Internet
content development,” said Tenon’s president, Steve Holmgren. “Despite its
ease of use, poor Macintosh Web performance and an eclectic array of
‘required’ Web options have hampered acceptance of the Macintosh as an
Internet delivery system. Tenon’s goal is to make the Macintosh a
world-class networking engine, with performance and features that meet and
eventually exceed those that are readily available on other platforms.”
Using encryption, SSL supports secure exchange of packets between WebTen
and any SSL-enabled Web browser. WebTen 2.0 is the only Macintosh Web
server that supports SSL 3.0, a state-of-the-art implementation supporting
such advanced features as streamlined handshaking for faster round-trip
times, multiple key exchange and encryption algorithms, and support of
hardware tokens in the form of Fortezza cards as a first step toward
cryptography-capable “smart cards”.
In the past, SSL support from other vendors required multiple Macintoshes
with different Web addresses, leading to a maintenance nightmare for ISPs.
Tenon’s multihoming SSL 3.0 can be configured to support simultaneous,
secure and unsecured operations for each Web address, enabling the support
of hundreds of secure Web addresses on a single Mac.
