Date: Fri, 10 Nov 1995 13:39:15 -0500 From: gwh@spiders.com (Gene W Homicki) To: hackers@freebsd.org, announce@freefall.freebsd.org Subject: Re: Anyone else think it's about time to beat a WEB server to death? Message-ID: <199511101839.NAA04438@www.ambook.org> In-Reply-To: "Jordan K. Hubbard"'s message as of Nov 10, 9:35
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+--- | However, I check myself with the knowledge that it's not an entirely | unreasonable thing to want to know, and I merely wish that I had more | data on this subject to provide in response. It's obviously | impossible to come up with one number that fits all situations, but | various guesstimates can be derived from existing data so that given a | link speed of x, a PC of macho-factor y and the "average" user doing | z, you can come up with a performance projection of n users. +--- The tough thing is figuring out what the "avaergae" user is doing. We maintain sites that range from html + small graphics only, to sites that use _very_ extensive use of CGI and HTTP authorization. The "macho" factor is also going to be highly dependent of disk controller, and what HDs you are using. +--- | What I'd most ideally like would be some numbers from a site that's to | WEB servers what ftp.cdrom.com is to FTP servers, but I'll take whatever | I can get! :-) | | Anyone got any stats they'd like to share? # of running daemons, | server used, hits-per-second, hardware used, that kind of thing. +--- Well, I'm just putting up my FreeBSD (100MHz Pentium/ASUS/NCR SCSI Compex Ether...thanks Rod!) servers this week, on a T1 thats has very little traffic at the moment, so... +--- | If we can't get any actual data from existing WEB service providers, | or even if we can, might I prevail on someone out there with a | well-connected box to possibly declare a "flag day", during which as | many people on this list as possible (and anyone else they can find) | aggressively attempts to beat the server to its knees while the server | maintainers busily collect stats on the event? +--- If we do this flag day relatively soon (within the next month or two), I'd be happy to offer a machine and link to pound on (right off the MCI backbone). +--- | can take.. We could even make it more widely publicised challenge by | posting details of the event in various non-FreeBSD newsgroups, like | Linux's or BSDI's. Given an open invite to see if they can bring a | FreeBSD WEB server to its knees, I'm sure many of the "competing OS" | advocates wouldn't be able to resist a challenge like that, especially | if the testing authority promised in advance to be relatively | impartial and post full results, be they good or bad. I'm confident | enough in this product that I think we'd come out looking pretty good! +--- its going to be tough to match exact configurations and network connections, but there is merit in the idea. +--- | So how about it? Any takers? If you're really interested in helping | to further the cause of Spreading The Word, I can assure you that this | would be a significant step in the right direction. I'll also be more | than happy to work with whomever steps forward in drafting a | reasonably provocative-sounding announcement to ensure that people | take up the gauntlet. After all, how much trouble can whapping | "reload" for 5 or so minutes be? :-) +--- if possible we should test for longer than "5min". I think most people are interested in real-wrld numbers and sustained load. Also realize that there are some "web test" type utilties that you can point at your server and pound away at them with (allowing you to set simultaneous number of connections, URLs to hit, etc). Working with one of these, or designing our own benchmarking (that includes CGI testing) could be the way to go if others are interested. I'm more than willing to work with a small group on this in my "copious spare time" (ha ha ha). Seriously, I think the competition is a great idea, no matter what the level of useful results we end up with. :) --Gene -- Gene W. Homicki gwh@spiders.com Objective Consulting, Inc. http://www.spiders.com/ Internet Presence Design voice: +1 914.353.3511
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