4 ms·

Can't think of any situations I was involved where the bottleneck was the http server app rather than the application behind it. Am I the only one?

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
If you’re only serving up heavyweight web apps, then this is probably true. But Caddy also markets itself as an efficient static file webserver right on the home page: > Caddy is both a flexible, efficient static file server and a powerful, scalable reverse proxy. Perhaps the confusing part is the way that Caddy is marketed as “The Ultimate Server” when instead it’s designed to be a fast-enough reverse proxy for applications where performance doesn’t matter. There are many applications where performance really does matter. Static file serving is the most obvious example.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  > There are many applications where performance really does matter. Like what? Genuine question. I'm sure a cloud provider's layer 7 load balancer / Kubernetes Ingress would merit an optimized implementation but beyond those kinds of super-scale use cases I can't think of much.
rampointerhater 5y ago
No. But looking at the site Caddy appears to be a product for easy and quick deployment, so that zero-knowledge people can run a web server. Their point is unlikely to be performance, it is probably in the lines of "low code".
Bayart 5y ago
As the other person that answered to you pointed out, there's a point where your HTTP server becomes the bottleneck, ie your backend being more concurrent and faster at producing content than your server is at delivering it. But I feel the real bottleneck is developer pain. I switched to nginx from Apache like everyone else because nginx was nice to use and Apache wasn't. The performance aspect was only a rationalization.
- mekster 5y ago
  What was not so nice about Apache? Mentioning without context sounds like an emotional one.
  - Bayart 5y ago
    I found Apache configuration to be cumbersome and hard to read, with nginx being comparatively clean and making reverse-proxying and caching easy. Keep in mind that was other a decade ago. I don't know where Apache is now, it's not something I have reassessed and I don't know if I would make the same choices with my current experience.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

If you’re only serving up heavyweight web apps, then this is probably true. But Caddy also markets itself as an efficient static file webserver right on the home page: > Caddy is both a flexible, efficient static file server and a powerful, scalable reverse proxy. Perhaps the confusing part is the way that Caddy is marketed as “The Ultimate Server” when instead it’s designed to be a fast-enough reverse proxy for applications where performance doesn’t matter. There are many applications where performance really does matter. Static file serving is the most obvious example.

throwaway894345 5y ago
> There are many applications where performance really does matter. Like what? Genuine question. I'm sure a cloud provider's layer 7 load balancer / Kubernetes Ingress would merit an optimized implementation but beyond those kinds of super-scale use cases I can't think of much.

rampointerhater 5y ago

No. But looking at the site Caddy appears to be a product for easy and quick deployment, so that zero-knowledge people can run a web server. Their point is unlikely to be performance, it is probably in the lines of "low code".

Bayart 5y ago

As the other person that answered to you pointed out, there's a point where your HTTP server becomes the bottleneck, ie your backend being more concurrent and faster at producing content than your server is at delivering it. But I feel the real bottleneck is developer pain. I switched to nginx from Apache like everyone else because nginx was nice to use and Apache wasn't. The performance aspect was only a rationalization.

mekster 5y ago
What was not so nice about Apache? Mentioning without context sounds like an emotional one.
- Bayart 5y ago
  I found Apache configuration to be cumbersome and hard to read, with nginx being comparatively clean and making reverse-proxying and caching easy. Keep in mind that was other a decade ago. I don't know where Apache is now, it's not something I have reassessed and I don't know if I would make the same choices with my current experience.