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Netcraft.com gives the following details for meta.stackoverflow.com metastack SO is an ASP.NET app so IIS should be the server, since MONO isn't full featured yet.Given that the details for meta.stackoverflow.com match pretty well.

The Netcraft data for stackoverflow.com stack stackoverflow.com however shows that it runs on Linux with a history of Linux + IIS. (Now www.stackoverflow.com also shows that it runs on Linux, but since it primarily does a 301 to stackoverflow.com, it could run on anything.) Data for stackexchange.com also shows that it runs on a nginx server on an Unknown OS. While previous history of Win Server 2008 with IIS 7.5 exists.

Now these signatures, I hear, can be easily spoofed(they can also be misleading), but are they and if not can the-powers-that-be give us some insight.

Update: There is also the minor issue of netblock ownership. The records differ for SO & SE, but that is off topic for this question. stackexchange

Update 2 And we recently were told that meta.SO is moving to NYC, the IP as per ip2location says the IP 64.34.119.12 belongs to CHICAGO ip2location

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This is most likely caused by the load balancer HAProxy which SO uses to manage traffic for the Trilogy in the original data centre. You can read more about it on the blog here:

Load Balancing Stack Overflow

There is a few articles on the blog covering this for interest sake. Since all requests for any of the Trilogy sites first go through HAProxy running on Linux, it is most likely passing this information back to the site requesting the information, and not on the Windows Servers sitting behind the proxy actually serving the site. You can also read more about the network setup here:

Stack Overflow Network Configuration

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  • thanks a load! :) That also means that SE is not on a load balancer, then why does it say nginx
    – abel
    Commented Oct 9, 2010 at 13:23
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    @abel. SE runs in a new datacenter in NY and no details have been released on what or how it runs so far. Since the current trilogy is being migrated there over the course of time, I am assuming once it is finished Jeff will reveal all the gory details. I do know however they implement a similar proxy since the NY data-centre is approximately double the size if not bigger of the current SO farm. A quick google reveals that nginx is also a HTTP Proxy and filter so it is using a similar setup as SO itself.
    – BinaryMisfit Mod
    Commented Oct 9, 2010 at 13:48
  • I have been seeing nginx for so long. never bothered to google. thank you.
    – abel
    Commented Oct 9, 2010 at 13:54

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