nginx vs apache as a reverse proxy

[Linden Varley]

Sorry I should of mentioned that the requests per second are also slightly higher with apache over nginx. Although it’s a marginal amount it is consistent.

Yes the backend server has a large number of sockets in TIME_WAIT and yes keep-alive is on on the backend too. Turning it off does actually close the gap which is much better, but are there any plans for the proxying in nginx to support keep-alives?

It plays havoc with the firewall too since it creates a new state entry in the state table for each socket.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nginx at sysoev.ru [mailto:owner-nginx at sysoev.ru] On Behalf Of Cliff Wells
Sent: Tuesday, 3 March 2009 10:08 AM
To: nginx at sysoev.ru
Subject: Re: nginx vs apache as a reverse proxy

On Mon, 2009-03-02 at 17:43 +1100, Linden Varley wrote:
> I’m doing some simple testing on a FreeBSD 7.0 server comparing
> Apache2 vs Nginx as a reverse proxy to an Apache backend server. The
> backend serves mainly static images using mod_python.
>
>
>
> I have yet to do thorough testing but it seems as though Apache2 has
> slightly higher throughput (KB/s measured using Jmeter) when compared
> to Nginx under moderate load.

Unfortunately (and counter-intuitively) KB/s isn't completely useful
without also considering actual requests per second:

http://www.joeandmotorboat.com/2008/02/28/apache-vs-nginx-web-server-performance-deathmatch/

"The network I/O graph I find interesting mostly because I don’t know
how to take it. On one hand it seems Apache is simply using more
bandwidth to do the same number of requests as Nginx. Which would seem
bad. On the other it could just mean that Apache does a better job of
consuming and using the available pipe. Which would seem good. My hunch
is that it is the former."

Regards,
Cliff
>



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