6 ms·

Upcoming SPDY support details

huggyface 14y ago
For a variety of reasons I recently needed a reverse proxy(#1) and went with Apache 2.2 w/Google's mod_spdy. What are the advantages, if any (above and beyond that nginx has a lot of cred right now), of using nginx? In a prior build-out nginx didn't even support HTTP/1.1 on the inside side of the reverse proxy, while Apache 2.2 does. #1 - We use it as a "least effort" geodistributed CDN. GeoDNS directs worldwide users (a small number of very high value users) to their local reverse proxy that has local caching of cacheable resources. Those proxies speak to the normal HTTP back-end servers through an SSH tunnel).
- alexchamberlain 14y ago
  Nginx is widely regarded to be much more efficient than Apache, as it using non-blocking IO. I believe Nginx does support HTTP/1.1 now.
  - chc 14y ago
    Apache can use event-driven non-blocking IO too, as well as the more traditional thread-per-connection mode.
    - harshreality 14y ago
      Apache's event MPM is not really an event MPM. It's a slightly modified worker MPM. It puts all idle connections (keepalive state) and listeners in a single thread. Each active connection gets its own thread. The event MPM also behaves the same as the worker MPM for SSL connections. http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/event.html http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/event.html
      - pquerna 14y ago
        This is incorrect for Apache 2.4: In 2.4 there is async write completion. SSL behavior is still like the worker MPM, due to design issues in mod_ssl and filter stack. This is unlikely to change until 3.0.
        harshreality 14y ago
        In what sense is Apache 2.4.2's event mpm event-based when this is the result of siege -c 1000 http://hostname:port/sample.txt http://hostname:port/sample.txt server-info selections MPM Name: event MPM Information: Max Daemons: 1 Threaded: yes Forked: yes server-status selections 1550 requests/sec - 1.6 GB/second - 1.1 MB/request 9 requests currently being processed, 41 idle workers W__W_____W_W_______R______W______W_______W__W_____.............. ................................................................ ...................... If those are asynchronous response writing handlers in the sense that they could be handled by an event loop, why do they have their own threads?
- deleted 14y ago
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  - deleted 14y ago
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- charliesome 14y ago
  Personally I find nginx to be a lot nicer to work with than Apache when it comes to the configuration.
  - newman314 14y ago
    Agreed. Not having to deal with Apache style rewrite rules alone is worth it. Had a scenario recently where I had to try to unwind about 50 of those rules (client site). Made my head hurt.
pwpwp 14y ago
SPDY is one frackin' cool protocol. I could easily see it being used as the default protocol for everything in the future, including inter-app comms in an OS.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  Because we need encryption for that, or...?
- alexchamberlain 14y ago
  pwpwp, there is no point in encrypting traffic between 2 processes on the same machine, as the data is already in memory unencrypted. In fact, there's not a lot of point in encrypting traffic between 2 machines on the same internal network. Only when you hit the internet, does traffic need encrypting.
  - 0xABADC0DA 14y ago
    Microsoft's Speed+Mobility proposal is actually much better than Spdy: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-montenegro-httpbis-speed-mobility-01 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-montenegro-httpbis-speed-mo... They took Spdy and dropped priorities, settings and other ill-conceived parts from it and made compression and encryption optional. There's still some Spdy warts in the HTTP parts of it though...
    - alexchamberlain 14y ago
      I don't have much opinion either way. However, always-on encryption and compression is one of the best bits about SPDY.
    - huggyface 14y ago
      They took Spdy and dropped priorities, settings and other ill-conceived parts from it and made compression and encryption optional. So they prioritized different things. That doesn't make it much better. As an aside, where is the Microsoft reference implementation of Speed+Mobility? Where is their browser support for it? This, like so many Microsoft initiatives, seems primarily intended to delay and divert an initiative to make the web better.
crusso 14y ago
For the podcast-learning types, I enjoyed the Security Now episode where they went over SPDY, episode 343. http://twit.tv/show/security-now/343 http://twit.tv/show/security-now/343 It was a nice gentle introduction to the subject while I was walking my dog.
zmmmmm 14y ago
So with Nginx, Apache, Tomcat all supporting SPDY that will be quite a lot of the widely used servers. I wonder how popular and widely implemented SPDY has to get before Microsoft would cave and put it in IIS and IE? I am sure they will hold out for a bit, but at some point if 50% of web traffic can go faster and IIS doesn't support that, it's going to be a pretty big disadvantage for IIS.
- ordinary 14y ago
  Why would Microsoft hold out? Is SPDY technologically inferior in some way? Does it give Google some competetive advantage? Does not supporting it give Microsoft some competetive advantage? Is there a fourth reason that I'm missing?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

For a variety of reasons I recently needed a reverse proxy(#1) and went with Apache 2.2 w/Google's mod_spdy. What are the advantages, if any (above and beyond that nginx has a lot of cred right now), of using nginx? In a prior build-out nginx didn't even support HTTP/1.1 on the inside side of the reverse proxy, while Apache 2.2 does. #1 - We use it as a "least effort" geodistributed CDN. GeoDNS directs worldwide users (a small number of very high value users) to their local reverse proxy that has local caching of cacheable resources. Those proxies speak to the normal HTTP back-end servers through an SSH tunnel).

alexchamberlain 14y ago
Nginx is widely regarded to be much more efficient than Apache, as it using non-blocking IO. I believe Nginx does support HTTP/1.1 now.
- chc 14y ago
  Apache can use event-driven non-blocking IO too, as well as the more traditional thread-per-connection mode.
  - harshreality 14y ago
    Apache's event MPM is not really an event MPM. It's a slightly modified worker MPM. It puts all idle connections (keepalive state) and listeners in a single thread. Each active connection gets its own thread. The event MPM also behaves the same as the worker MPM for SSL connections. http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/event.html http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/event.html
    - pquerna 14y ago
      This is incorrect for Apache 2.4: In 2.4 there is async write completion. SSL behavior is still like the worker MPM, due to design issues in mod_ssl and filter stack. This is unlikely to change until 3.0.
      - harshreality 14y ago
        In what sense is Apache 2.4.2's event mpm event-based when this is the result of siege -c 1000 http://hostname:port/sample.txt http://hostname:port/sample.txt server-info selections MPM Name: event MPM Information: Max Daemons: 1 Threaded: yes Forked: yes server-status selections 1550 requests/sec - 1.6 GB/second - 1.1 MB/request 9 requests currently being processed, 41 idle workers W__W_____W_W_______R______W______W_______W__W_____.............. ................................................................ ...................... If those are asynchronous response writing handlers in the sense that they could be handled by an event loop, why do they have their own threads?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
charliesome 14y ago
Personally I find nginx to be a lot nicer to work with than Apache when it comes to the configuration.
- newman314 14y ago
  Agreed. Not having to deal with Apache style rewrite rules alone is worth it. Had a scenario recently where I had to try to unwind about 50 of those rules (client site). Made my head hurt.

pwpwp 14y ago

SPDY is one frackin' cool protocol. I could easily see it being used as the default protocol for everything in the future, including inter-app comms in an OS.

StavrosK 14y ago
Because we need encryption for that, or...?
alexchamberlain 14y ago
pwpwp, there is no point in encrypting traffic between 2 processes on the same machine, as the data is already in memory unencrypted. In fact, there's not a lot of point in encrypting traffic between 2 machines on the same internal network. Only when you hit the internet, does traffic need encrypting.
- 0xABADC0DA 14y ago
  Microsoft's Speed+Mobility proposal is actually much better than Spdy: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-montenegro-httpbis-speed-mobility-01 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-montenegro-httpbis-speed-mo... They took Spdy and dropped priorities, settings and other ill-conceived parts from it and made compression and encryption optional. There's still some Spdy warts in the HTTP parts of it though...
  - alexchamberlain 14y ago
    I don't have much opinion either way. However, always-on encryption and compression is one of the best bits about SPDY.
  - huggyface 14y ago
    They took Spdy and dropped priorities, settings and other ill-conceived parts from it and made compression and encryption optional. So they prioritized different things. That doesn't make it much better. As an aside, where is the Microsoft reference implementation of Speed+Mobility? Where is their browser support for it? This, like so many Microsoft initiatives, seems primarily intended to delay and divert an initiative to make the web better.

crusso 14y ago

For the podcast-learning types, I enjoyed the Security Now episode where they went over SPDY, episode 343. http://twit.tv/show/security-now/343 http://twit.tv/show/security-now/343 It was a nice gentle introduction to the subject while I was walking my dog.

zmmmmm 14y ago

So with Nginx, Apache, Tomcat all supporting SPDY that will be quite a lot of the widely used servers. I wonder how popular and widely implemented SPDY has to get before Microsoft would cave and put it in IIS and IE? I am sure they will hold out for a bit, but at some point if 50% of web traffic can go faster and IIS doesn't support that, it's going to be a pretty big disadvantage for IIS.

ordinary 14y ago
Why would Microsoft hold out? Is SPDY technologically inferior in some way? Does it give Google some competetive advantage? Does not supporting it give Microsoft some competetive advantage? Is there a fourth reason that I'm missing?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]