Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 01:45:53 -0700 (MST)
From: Marc Slemko <marcs@znep.com>
To: new-httpd@hyperreal.com
Subject: Re: ZD Net tests, IRIX, and MAX_SOCKETS
In-Reply-To: <199701200819.CAA29431@futurefx.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.95.970120013553.15617a-100000@alive.ampr.ab.ca>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: new-httpd-owner@apache.org
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: new-httpd@hyperreal.com

On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Jason Clary wrote:

> 
> Hey guys.. i was reading this article in ZD Net's Internet Magazine
> and I noticed that their unix server running IRIX 6.3 on an SGI O2
> workstation with 180mhz R5000 processor, 128meg of ram, and 2gb harddrive
> that its copy of Stronhold only managed to serve 100 requests/second
> on average while on NT, MS IIS, NS Enterprise, and Commerce Builder
> all managed over 500/s.. IIS was nearly 1000.

They only tested one server under Unix?  That's lame.  Sure, they can
claim that they just wanted to test Unix as an alternative to NT so they
only needed one, etc. but it leaves an awful lot of room for
misconfiguration... 

> I was wondering if anyone knows if IRIX has a max socket limit in
> the kernel like linux and SunOS do.  I believe most unix systems
> are set to 256 socket maximum at boot time and can only be changed
> via kernel rebuild.  I would expect the sockets to be taken up fully
> in this case at around 100 requests/s in which case requests w ould
> start waiting.
> 
> If this is the case, we should have a serious talk with ZDNet about that
> as its giving ALL unix web servers a bad name, not just Apache/Stronghold
> but all the others as well.  And its giving Unix a bad name.  I've
> got a linux box running on a 486dx4100 that can do 100 requests per second
> which makes this seem crazy.

Are they doing SSL transfers though?  They are real pigs.  It is possible
(don't know, haven't looked) that the SSL part is slowing it down.

If they aren't doing SSL transfers, I agree 100/sec is way too low unless
they are doing some really odd transfers.

> 
> Anyways, anyone running IRIX please take a look and see if its the same
> sort of deal as on linux and SunOS where you recompile with 1024+ sockets
> to get better performance on a net server.
> 
> NT, since the socket layer is not in the kernel, can allocate descriptors
> on the fly... It also doesn't map them into its VFS like most unix systems
> do and the descriptors aren't actualy interchangeable with file descriptors
> like they are on unix so it doesn't suffer from this limit.  Although it
> suffers in other ways because of the resource intensive nature of NT's
> user interface.
> 
> If this is, indeed, the problem thats giving Apache such a bad benchmark
> on their tests, it should be pointed out and corrected immediately.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Jason
>