webserver performance (was Re: Why so few Python jobs? (and licenses))

[Paul Rubin]

Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> writes:
>         http://www.acme.com/software/thttpd/benchmarks.html
> and they do show that even-based ('select') servers leave all others in the 
> dust (700+ to 1000+ requests per second on the test configuration, versus 
> 250 for Apache and 45 for architectures based on Java threads).  The test 
> config is a 300 MHz UltraSparc, but I don't have a good feeling for what 
> that implies in terms of overall machine performance.  They do make the 
> point that any of these servers can saturate a T1 line when running on a 
> Pentium-100, though:-) -- so unless you're serving on a fast LAN-based 
> intranet using rather oldish hardware, server performance shouldn't be a 
> crucial issue, should it?

A 300 MHz Ultrasparc is comparable to a 500 MHz Celeron/PIII,
probably.  On the other hand, Solaris's context switch overhead is
quite a bit worse than Linux's, so the Apache to Thttpd speed ratio
probably isn't as bad on a Linux box as under Solaris.

We were running what we hoped would be a huge ecommerce site (dotcom
dreams) with most of the pages served via SSL, so we cared about speed.