Apache is a general webserver, which is designed to be - correct first, and fast second. Even so, its performance is - quite satisfactory. Most sites have less than 10Mbits of - outgoing bandwidth, which Apache can fill using only a low end - Pentium-based webserver. In practice sites with more bandwidth - require more than one machine to fill the bandwidth due to - other constraints (such as CGI or database transaction - overhead). For these reasons the development focus has been - mostly on correctness and configurability.
+Apache 2.0 is a general-purpose webserver, designed to + provide a balance of flexibility, portability, and performance. + Although it has not been designed specifically to set benchmark + records, Apache 2.0 is capable of high performance in many + real-world situations.
-Unfortunately many folks overlook these facts and cite raw - performance numbers as if they are some indication of the - quality of a web server product. There is a bare minimum - performance that is acceptable, beyond that extra speed only - caters to a much smaller segment of the market. But in order to - avoid this hurdle to the acceptance of Apache in some markets, - effort was put into Apache 1.3 to bring performance up to a - point where the difference with other high-end webservers is - minimal.
+Compared to Apache 1.3, release 2.0 contains many additional + optimizations to increase throughput and scalability. Most of + these improvements are enabled by default. However, there are + compile-time and run-time configuration choices that can + significantly affect performance. This document describes the + options that a server administrator can configure to tune the + performance of an Apache 2.0 installation. Some of these + configuration options enable the httpd to better take advantage + of the capabilities of the hardware and OS, while others allow + the administrator to trade functionality for speed.
-Finally there are the folks who just plain want to see how - fast something can go. The author falls into this category. The - rest of this document is dedicated to these folks who want to - squeeze every last bit of performance out of Apache's current - model, and want to understand why it does some things which - slow it down.
- -Note that this is tailored towards Apache 1.3 on Unix. Some - of it applies to Apache on NT. Apache on NT has not been tuned - for performance yet; in fact it probably performs very poorly - because NT performance requires a different programming - model.