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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!zombie.ncsc.mil!newsgate.duke.edu!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.erols.net!news1.erols.com!news From: Ken Bigelow <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.infosystems.www.misc Subject: Re: Unix too slow for a Web server? Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 21:03:57 +0000 Organization: Erol's Internet Services Lines: 45 Message-ID: <323F123D.6D55@www.play-hookey.com> References: <323ED0BD.222CA97F@pobox.com> Reply-To: kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com NNTP-Posting-Host: kenjb05.play-hookey.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win16; U) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:129653 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:27400 comp.infosystems.www.misc:43699 Subhas Roy wrote: > > A ZDnet article says in the web page > http://www.zdnet.com/pccomp/features/fea1096/sub4.html#jump2 > that Windows NT-based servers run much faster (as much as 13 > times) when client counts are low. > > Is that possible? Anybody wants to comment on the > article's claim? I will refrain from uttering the plain-language content of my real opinion of such a claim. Let's just leave it at this: I'm running Apache 1.1.1 on a FreeBSD 2.1R platform, and even when my site is being accessed top reports the CPU capacity is largely idle. The server machine is currently using a 486DX-50. I plan to upgrade to an AMD 5x86DX-133, which overclocks very nicely to 160 MHz (too bad it won't do 200, but what do you want? Egg in your beer?), but there seems little need to hurry; the box outspeeds the phone line with my present connection, and I can't afford an ISDN link or better until I go commercial (which will be yet awhile). Since we are running Win 3.1, WFW3.11, Win95 (shudder), NT 3.51, and NT4 beta at work, as well as a FreeBSD box, I can say this much from direct observation and experience: the web server we tried to run on WinNT in no way outperformed Apache on FreeBSD, and the NT platform itself is not as stable. I wonder if whoever made that comparison was carefully running httpd under inetd, rather than standalone? That way, inetd would have to take time to load httpd into memory, which at low usage would slow things down. Running Apache in standalone mode leaves from 5 to 10 copies of httpd idling in RAM, waiting for a call, so there's no delay in responding. Further, as calls come in additional idle copies are loaded, to the max specified (default 150). Again, minimum delay. In fact, with Apache running this way, a page and four image files will typically be handled concurrently by different httpd clones in RAM, so everything is sent at the same time. Our WinNT server had to handle such requests in sequence. Not exactly what I'd call a faster way. -- Ken Are you interested in | byte-sized education | http://www.play-hookey.com over the Internet? |