nginx in high concurrency setups

[Dennis J.]

Hi,
I'm currently experimenting how many concurrent connections nginx can 
handle. The problem I'm running into is that for each request I send to the 
server I get a connection in TIME_WAIT state. If I do this using 
benchmarking tools like httperf or ab I quickly seem to hit a ceiling. Once 
the number of TIME_WAIT connections reaches about 16000 the benchmarking 
tools just freeze and I have to wait until that number comes down again. 
What is the reason for these TIME_WAIT connections and how can I get rid of 
them faster? I'm only serving small static files and the delivery is not 
supposed to take longer than say 300ms so any connection that takes longer 
than that can be aborted if that is necessary to make room for new incoming 
connections.
Does anyone have experience with serving lots of small static requests 
using nginx?

Regards,
   Dennis