NGINX is an open source web server. It’s used primarily to serve static content, such as images, JavaScript, and CSS, at massive scale It’s used by the most successful cloud companies in the world, including Airbnb, Dropbox, Netflix, Uber, and more.
NGINX was initially written in 2002, and open sourced in 2004, by Igor Sysoev to address the performance limitations of the Apache HTTP server. Apache uses a process/thread per connection model that does not scale with a large number of concurrent connections. NGINX instead uses an event driven architecture that overcomes the limitations of Apache. This helped solve the biggest challenge faced by app developers at the time, the explosive growth of internet users.
NGINX’s growth has been substantial and we see that continuing. In 2013, we became the #1 web server for the top 1,000 busiest websites, in 2014, #1 for the top 10,000 sites and in 2015, #1 in the top 100,000 sites in 2015. For 2017, we aim to be the top web server for the one million busiest websites.
https://appdevelopermagazine.com/5133/2017/4/13/how-nginx-could-overpower-microsoft-soon/
