Comparing the performance of web server architectures

In this paper, we extensively tune and then compare the performance of web servers based on three different server architectures. The µserver utilizes an event-driven architecture, Knot uses the highly-efficient Capriccio thread library to implement a thread-perconnection model, and WatPipe uses a hybrid of events and threads to implement a pipeline-based server that is similar in spirit to a staged event-driven architecture (SEDA) server like Haboob. We describe modifications made to the Capriccio thread library to use Linux’s zero-copy sendfile interface. We then introduce the SYmmetric Multi-Processor Event Driven (SYMPED) architecture in which relatively minor modifications are made to a single process event-driven (SPED) server (the µserver) to allow it to continue processing requests in the presence of blocking due to disk accesses. Finally, we describe our C++ implementation of WatPipe, which although utilizing a pipeline-based architecture, excludes the dynamic control...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: EUROSYS
• Authors: David Pariag, Tim Brecht, Ashif S. Harji, Peter A. Buhr, Amol Shukla, David R. Cheriton
• Keywords: Capriccio Thread Library, EUROSYS 2007, Event-driven Architecture, SYmmetric Multi-Processor Event, System Software