maximum possible HTTP Requests

How far can we go?

[goseo]

Hi,

I was wondering how many http Requests a server can send per second. I donīt think the hardware will be a problem, so the operating system must be the problem.

If we think of the best possible answer time of the requested computer, how many parallel socket connections can be opened by the sending server at the same time.

I am not a apache pro, so donīt mind if my question is stupid. ;)
Thanks
goseo

[zCat]

The only answer is: "it depends". If your server is Apache, the number of requests which can be served simultaneously is limited by the number of Apache child processes which can run concurrently. This in turn depends on how Apache is configured; a plain vanilla Apache serving HTML requires less memory per process than one serving PHP for example. The number of requests serveable in a given time period is also dependent on the time it takes to render a page (i.e. run PHP etc.), and also the time it takes to deliver the page (particularly request from clients on slow connections will tie up Apache processes; although there are ways round this).

I've no idea whether there's any limit on the possible number of actual network socket connections, but as a guess it's far higher than will be attained by any webserver.

[goseo]

Hi zCat,

thanks for your answer. Well if it depends...i have to try out...is there any script that allows me to test this?

Thanks
goseo

[zCat]

There's a program called "ab" (Apache benchmark) which comes with Apache, which you could try. I sometimes also use httrack, which can run several spidering processes in parallel, which gives an idea how well the server performs.

[Matt Probert]

We pondered the same question, after observing 1050 simultaneous http requests being serviced by our vanilla Apache system (on a RaQ 4 server).

Never did find an answer! I guess no one actually knows.

Matt