optimization

UPDATE: I've updated some of the numbers below to reflect corrections for a testing error. Let's just say to be sure not to benchmark with any external links in your test pages (because if you do use external links you'll obviously be benchmarking the external server too, which is not what we want in this case). To summarize the effect of these corrections - having lighttpd in front of Apache and pipelining actually provide a substantially larger boost in performance than I had indicated before. Other than that the results are the same.

So things with my first attempt at benchmarking HTTP pipelining did not go exactly as planned. It turns out that if two different domains/subdomains you are using for content on your site are pointing to the same IP, based on previous testing, it looks like browsers (at least FireFox) will not pipeline requests (e.g., create more concurrent requests to your site) because it considers the requests as being from the same origin. In order for a browser to pipelining requests at all, they seem to require two domains/subdomains which are using two separate/unique IPs. If you read the Wikipedia entry for hostnames this all makes sense, as it indicates domains are associated with IP's, and browserscope's testing of browsers checks for "Connections per Hostname", not "Connections per Domain".

After figuring out how to get requests to pipeline correctly, I re-benchmarked all the configurations from the first article . Everything from that article regarding lighttpd is still holds true, so without covering those aspects again, here's the updated benchmarks and notes for browser request pipelining:

During the course of administering a server full of various sites which have been Farked, Dugg, and StumbledUpon'd, I've learned first hand the value of optimizing a Drupal site/server to handle large amounts of traffic. I've also learned that eventually it's likely that the level of optimization for one's Drupal site/server will be rendered mostly irrelevant by frequent, and (mostly) malicious, circumstances.