Building your own Home Server [Part 1] – Introduction

serv·er/ˈsərvər/

Noun:

A person or thing that provides a service or commodity, in particular.

A computer or computer program that manages access to a centralized resource or service in a network.

I included the first definition because computer servers works similarly to a human server. Understandably, a server provides a service. In fact, your current computer is a server itself. It’s a server which provides its own service.

The Client-Server Model

Many applications are created using a “Client-Server Model”. This means that some machine has to host a service, and the user will be the client to access the service. If you’re using a local application, your computer could be the client and server at the same time. It provides the service, and you access the service as a client on the same computer. The Client Server model is not used solely when the client and server are two separate machines. They can be local services.

 

However, most of the times, a server is accessed remotely from another place. When you browse the web, you are in fact accessing a remote server. When you type in “google.com” in your web browser, you are in fact trying to access Google’s web server somewhere in US. The server response to your request and sends the webpage back to you at your local computer. That’s is how you get the webpage shown on your screen. It all happens in that few milliseconds.

Home Server?