[hunchentoot-devel] Different speed loading images from static apache and hunchentoot handler

[Edi Weitz]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 16:24:43 -0400, "Andrei Stebakov" <lispercat at gmail.com> wrote:

> I got a folder on my linux box that contains about 240 images of font
> preview generated from cl-gd (Thanks, Edi!).

Nice... :)

> When I show them from static apache handler it takes approximately 30
> seconds. Same thing from hunchentoot static handler
> (create-folder-dispatcher-and-handler) takes about 50 seconds. I understand
> it's not a big deal, but still I'd like to know what might get in the way. I
> use hunchentoot behind mod-proxy.
> Here are links (first is static apache, second is hunchentoot):
> http://www.greenpixeldesign.com/fonts.html
> http://www.greenpixeldesign.com/cphandler/fonts.html

I guess it's the thread switching that takes the additional time.
>From tests on my Linux box (using ApacheBench and a localhost
connection) my impression was that serving static files with
Hunchentoot wasn't slower than with Apache.  On your website it looks
like on the Apache page always two or three pictures are downloaded
concurrently while on the Hunchentoot version they come one after
another.  It seems you're using CMUCL which uses "green threads," so
that would explain it.

If you want to pursue this further, I'd recommend testing with
ApacheBench and different settings for its "-c" parameter.

Of course, you could/should also try without mod_proxy.  And with
mod_lisp - that takes a bit of the concurrency off of CMUCL's
shoulders.