Benchmark: Apache2 vs. Lighttpd (Images)

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
Last edited 09/16/2008

This benchmark shows how Apache2 (version 2.2.3) and lighttpd (version 1.4.13) perform compared to each other when delivering an image file (jpg, about 25KB in size). This benchmark was created with the help of ab (Apache benchmark) on a VMware vm (Debian Etch); if you try this yourself, your numbers might differ (depending on your hardware), but the tendency should be the same.

Preliminary Note

I have tested this on a Debian Etch system with 512MB RAM inside a VMware vm on a system with an Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1400MHz (yes, quite old, but as I said in the introduction, the tendency should be the same on other hardware).

Apache 2.2.3 mpm-prefork with default Debian configuration.

Lighttpd 1.4.13 with default Debian configuration.

The image file is 25KB in size and called test.jpg.

I've run the following commands ten times each and calculated the average requests per second that the web server could handle:

ab -n 100 -c 5 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

ab -n 1000 -c 5 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

ab -n 10000 -c 5 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

ab -n 100 -c 50 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

ab -n 1000 -c 50 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

ab -n 10000 -c 50 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

ab -n 100 -c 100 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

ab -n 1000 -c 100 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

ab -n 10000 -c 100 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

-n is the number of requests to perform for the benchmarking session; -c is the number of multiple requests to perform at a time.

ab -n 100 -c 5 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

Apache: 540,14 requests/second

Lighttpd: 608,71 requests/second (+ 12,69%)

ab -n 1000 -c 5 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

Apache: 1146,94 requests/second

Lighttpd: 1408,45 requests/second (+ 22,80%)

ab -n 10000 -c 5 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

Apache: 2111,64 requests/second

Lighttpd: 2646,44 requests/second (+ 25,33%)

ab -n 100 -c 50 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

Apache: 509,01 requests/second

Lighttpd: 551,21 requests/second (+ 8,29%)

ab -n 1000 -c 50 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

Apache: 1095,03 requests/second

Lighttpd: 1282,62 requests/second (+ 17,13%)

ab -n 10000 -c 50 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

Apache: 1816,61 requests/second

Lighttpd: 2266,33 requests/second (+ 24,76%)

ab -n 100 -c 100 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

Apache: 484,80 requests/second

Lighttpd: 485,07 requests/second (+ 0,06%)

ab -n 1000 -c 100 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

Apache: 1073,90 requests/second

Lighttpd: 1276,06 requests/second (+ 18,82%)

ab -n 10000 -c 100 http://192.168.0.100/test.jpg

Apache: 1729,61 requests/second

Lighttpd: 1985,28 requests/second (+ 14,78%)

Complete Graph