Comparison of lighttpd and Apache (1.3) proxy vs SCGI front
ends to a QP web application server. SCGI offers better performance
on both web servers; proxy on Apache is surprisingly less performant.

Overall lighttpd has a much smaller ram and resource utilization footprint.

==================================================
QP web server direct    2.38 [ms] (mean)
lighttpd 1.4.20
lighttpd proxy to QP    2.41 [ms] (mean)
lighttpd SCGI           2.31 [ms] (mean)

APACHE 1.3.41
APACHE 1.3 proxy to QP  3.39 [ms] (mean)
APACHE 1.3 mod_scgi     2.30 [ms] (mean)
==================================================

lighttpd example configuration:

$HTTP["host"] == "localhost" {
# proxy and scgi both point to "hello" example application
# done for perf testing of proxy vs scgi
   $SERVER["socket"] == "0:8100" {
        proxy.server = (
        "" => (("host" => "127.0.0.1",
                "port" => 8000))
        )
    }
    # port 80 default goes to SCGI
    scgi.server = ( "" =>
        ( "localhost" =>
            ( "host" => "127.0.0.1",
              "port" => 6000,
              "check-local" => "disable",
              "disable-time" => 5
            )
        )
    )
}

Results:
==================================================

QP BASELINE - INTERNAL WEB SERVER
==================================================
Server Software:        qp/2.1                                             
Server Hostname:        localhost
Server Port:            8000

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        12 bytes

Concurrency Level:      1
Time taken for tests:   2.378 seconds
Complete requests:      1000
Failed requests:        0
Broken pipe errors:     0
Total transferred:      174000 bytes
HTML transferred:       12000 bytes
Requests per second:    420.52 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       2.38 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       2.38 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          73.17 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connnection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0     0    0.0      0     0
Processing:     1     2    0.1      2     5
Waiting:        1     2    0.1      2     5
Total:          1     2    0.1      2     5


lighttpd proxy to QP
==================================================
Server Software:        lighttpd/1.4.20                                    
Server Hostname:        localhost
Server Port:            8100

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        12 bytes

Concurrency Level:      1
Time taken for tests:   2.409 seconds
Complete requests:      1000
Failed requests:        0
Broken pipe errors:     0
Total transferred:      203000 bytes
HTML transferred:       12000 bytes
Requests per second:    415.11 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       2.41 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       2.41 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          84.27 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connnection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0     0    0.0      0     0
Processing:     2     2    0.1      2     5
Waiting:        1     1    0.1      1     4
Total:          2     2    0.1      2     5


lighttpd SCGI to QP
==================================================
Server Software:        lighttpd/1.4.20                                    
Server Hostname:        localhost
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        12 bytes

Concurrency Level:      1
Time taken for tests:   2.306 seconds
Complete requests:      1000
Failed requests:        0
Broken pipe errors:     0
Total transferred:      203000 bytes
HTML transferred:       12000 bytes
Requests per second:    433.65 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       2.31 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       2.31 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          88.03 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connnection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0     0    0.0      0     1
Processing:     1     2    0.1      2     5
Waiting:        1     2    0.2      2     4
Total:          1     2    0.1      2     5


APACHE 1.3

APACHE 1.3 MOD SCGI
==================================================
Server Software:        Apache/1.3.41                                      
Server Hostname:        localhost
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        12 bytes

Concurrency Level:      1
Time taken for tests:   2.300 seconds
Complete requests:      1000
Failed requests:        0
Broken pipe errors:     0
Total transferred:      204000 bytes
HTML transferred:       12000 bytes
Requests per second:    434.78 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       2.30 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       2.30 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          88.70 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connnection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0     0    0.0      0     0
Processing:     1     2    0.1      2     4
Waiting:        1     1    0.1      1     3
Total:          1     2    0.1      2     4



APACHE 1.3 PROXY
==================================================
Server Software:        qp/2.1                                             
Server Hostname:        localhost
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /foo/
Document Length:        12 bytes

Concurrency Level:      1
Time taken for tests:   3.391 seconds
Complete requests:      1000
Failed requests:        0
Broken pipe errors:     0
Total transferred:      246000 bytes
HTML transferred:       12000 bytes
Requests per second:    294.90 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       3.39 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       3.39 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          72.54 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connnection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0     0    0.0      0     0
Processing:     3     3    0.4      3    16
Waiting:        2     2    0.4      2    15
Total:          3     3    0.4      3    16