[tbnl-devel] New version 0.5.0 / Multiple back-ends

[Marc Battyani]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stefan Scholl" <stesch at no-spoon.de>
To: <tbnl-devel at common-lisp.net>
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2005 9:39 AM
Subject: Re: [tbnl-devel] New version 0.5.0 / Multiple back-ends


> On 2005-08-16 22:24:56, Stefan Scholl wrote:
> > I was just wondering ... isn't now every proxy feature in every
> > webserver some kind of mod_lisp?
> >
> > What are the pros and cons of mod_lisp vs. proxy (+ TBNL
> > stand-alone)?
>
> Forget it. mod_lisp is much, much faster. 3 to 4 times faster in
> a local test with ApacheBench against Apache 1.3 + mod_lisp +
> TBNL, lighttpd + mod_proxy + TBNL, and TBNL stand-alone.
>
> Apache 1.3 + mod_lisp + TBNL was always faster.
>
> The mod_lisp request data can be parsed without any regular
> expressions. Maybe that's enough to cause that difference in
> speed.

They are several reasons why mod_lisp is faster than mod_proxy and generally
than a standalone lisp server in real world applications:

The most important point for the speed is that mod_lisp keeps the Apache =>
Lisp socket open.

Most Lisp implementation don't use native threads or don't allow more than
one thread to be active. So using Apache as a front-end is more efficient if
there are more than one processor (or an HT one)

Apache can serve the static content thus leaving more Lisp CPU time to
process application logic.

BTW 14.6 request/s is very slow. Are you sure you keep the Apache/Lisp
socket open ? FYI I get 440 req/s max on a dual Xeon 2GHz for a fixed reply.

Marc