NGinX was created by Igor Sysoev and was publicly released in October 2004. It was designed to solve the C10k problem, which is a limitation that traditional web servers (like Apache) faced in handling 10,000 concurrent connections. Sysoev initially developed it to meet the performance needs of the Rambler search engine in Russia, but it quickly gained popularity for its efficiency, lightweight architecture, and ability to handle high levels of traffic.
NGINX’s architecture is event-driven and asynchronous, allowing it to handle multiple connections with minimal memory footprint and resource usage. This efficiency is why it became the go-to solution for high-traffic websites and for use as a reverse proxy and load balancer.
2002-2004: Development begins with Igor Sysoev working to create a high-performance web server solution to handle concurrent connections better than traditional servers.
October 2004: The first public release of NGINX (version 0.1.0) as an open-source project.
2011: NGINX, Inc. was founded by Igor Sysoev and Maxim Konovalov to offer commercial support and advanced products built around NGINX.
2013: The release of NGINX Plus, a commercial version of NGINX with added features like active health checks, advanced monitoring, and a commercial support plan.
2015: NGINX overtakes Apache as the most popular web server used by the top 1,000 busiest websites, solidifying its place in the high-performance server landscape.
2019: NGINX, Inc. was acquired by F5 Networks for $670 million, integrating it with F5’s application services and security solutions, while NGINX continues to be developed as both an open-source project and a commercial product.
NGinX Open Source: The free and open-source version, maintained as part of the larger NGINX community, with regular updates and releases.
NGinX Plus: A commercial offering from NGINX, Inc. with additional enterprise-grade features such as:
Both versions are built on the same core codebase, but NGinX Plus includes premium features, security patches, and professional support.
NGINX uses a semantic versioning system:
1.18.0).1.18.x).1.19.x).For example:
NGINX recommends using the mainline version for most users, as it is the most up-to-date, while stable versions are more conservative and suited for production environments where changes need to be more predictable.
NGinX 1.0 (April 2011): The first stable release after years of development in the 0.x branch.
NGinX 1.6 and 1.8 (2014-2015): Introduced more robust security and HTTP/2 support.
NGinX 1.9 (2015): Added HTTP/2 support, stream processing, and TCP load balancing.
NGinX 1.13 (2017): Integrated support for gRPC and WebSockets, which allowed NGINX to serve as a reverse proxy for these protocols.
NGinX 1.15-1.17 (2018-2020): Enhanced HTTP/2 features and brought QUIC/HTTP3 support, providing better performance for modern web applications.
NGinX is known for its modular design, allowing users to extend functionality through modules. Some popular modules include:
NGinX modules can be compiled in at build time or dynamically loaded (in newer versions).
NGinX is widely used by high-traffic websites like Netflix, Pinterest, Airbnb, and Dropbox. It has become a standard for performance-sensitive applications, APIs, and microservices architectures.