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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!nntp.uio.no!news.cais.net!in1.nntp.cais.net!news1.iamerica.net!xavier.varmm.com!not-for-mail From: AJ Musgrove <musgrove@xavier.varmm.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: 5 Nov 1996 16:25:10 GMT Organization: A poorly-installed InterNetNews site Lines: 39 Message-ID: <55npp6$c5r@news1.iamerica.net> References: <323ED0BD.222CA97F@pobox.com> <552p74$23e@polo.demon.co.uk> <554fun$r8v@clarknet.clark.net> <55io8t$jca@uriah.heep.sax.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.81.50.10 X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 unoff BETA release 960917] Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:139951 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:30666 comp.infosystems.www.misc:45392 J Wunsch <j@uriah.heep.sax.de> wrote: : wmcbrine@clark.net (William McBrine) wrote: : > The reason Win NT -- and, IMHO a better choice, OS/2 -- systems might be : > faster web servers than Unix systems, in some circumstances, is their use : > of lightweight threads. : I think the discussion about the usefulness of threads is as long as : the idea of threads. :-) : Threads are a great thing in some circumstances, in particular if you : gonna share much data between the threads (where, in a multiprocess : environment, you would need some IPC setup, e.g. using shared memory : the one or other way). I think things like graphical applications : (one thread running the main job, one running the menu handling etc.) : benefit most from it. I'm not sure whether a Web server will benefit : that much however. : If you gonna use threads only as a poor-man's workaround for a system : that cannot fork fast enough (since either the system or the hardware : has problems) however, you need not be surprised to find other systems : (on other hardware) performing as well or better with a non-threaded : but plain multiprocessing approach. The fork/exec times of modern : Unices are often very fast these days. (No surprise, fork() is of : fundamental importance for a Unix system, hence everybody tried to : optimize it as good as possible.) As far as threads go, POSIX as a definition for threads, available as the pthreads library on some systems. These provide the same LWPs as OS/2 or NT (yuk) systems. -- AJ Musgrove ---------------------------------------------------------------- My opinions do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, or anyone else for that matter. O- ----------------------------------------------------------------