Nginx

Nginx is a web server created by Igor Sysoev in 2004, originally to solve the C10K problem — efficiently handling ten thousand concurrent connections. Its event-driven, asynchronous architecture processes requests without creating a thread per connection, resulting in predictable memory usage under load.

Nginx serves as an HTTP server, reverse proxy, load balancer, and TLS termination point. It powers a significant share of the most visited websites and is the most widely used ingress controller in Kubernetes deployments. Its declarative configuration language is well-documented and makes setting up virtual hosts, proxy rules, and caching straightforward. The full documentation covers all directives and configuration options.