Using ab to benchmark nginx: Connection reset by peer (54)

[janedenone]

I recently updated to nginx 1.0.8 and tried to benchmark performance for
cached dynamic pages (initially served by a Django app via proxy_pass)
and for static pages. In both cases, nginx will not serve more than 3 or
4 requests (even without concurrent connections), so ab almost
immediately reports:

Benchmarking testsite.static (be patient)...apr_socket_recv: Connection
reset by peer (54)

It is only when choosing a maximum of 4 (or fewer) requests that ab
finishes successfully.

Why is that? I tried increasing the number of worker processes (no
luck), but I assume that nginx should be capable of serving more than 4
requests without tweaking any configuration variable. Could it be that I
accidentally triggered some sort of DOS protection mechanism?

Posted at Nginx Forum: http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,218554,218554#msg-218554