Litespeed Vs. Apache web server - Real world page loading speed test results

Replies

• 

  avii

  I played with Yaws, hyber.org. Its also faster than Apache
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  lsmichael

  Howdy,
  
  LiteSpeed Technologies here. There are a number of differences between LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS) and Apache. The largest difference is LSWS's Event-Driven vs. Process-Based Web Servers - LiteSpeed Technologies, which means that it handles multiple connections much better, using less CPU and RAM, and pulls out static content much faster. A page like this, using Xenforo, which is written in PHP, will also see some performance benefits from our use of #-Link-Snipped-#.
  
  Hope that helps clear things up. Glad LSWS is helping you so much.
  
  Cheers,
  
  Michael
• 

  Kaustubh Katdare

  @#-Link-Snipped-# - It's a pleasure to have you with us on CE. I can confirm that Litespeed handles load much better than Apache; we've had record number of simultaneous users online a few days ago and LSWS didn't acknowledge that there was load. Apache would have gone down for similar loads; as it did in the past.
  
  Would love to know what exactly does LSAPI offer which result into faster PHP performance?
• 

  Anand Tamariya

  I think the performance of LSAPI is good only for PHP because it focuses on that. Apache on the other hand is a generic webserver and works for variety of use-cases given one understands how to tune it properly.
• 

  lsmichael

  Howdy again.
  
  

  I think the performance of LSAPI is good only for #-Link-Snipped-# because it focuses on that.

  LSAPI provides better-than-Apache performance for PHP, Ruby, and now Python: #-Link-Snipped-#
  
  We do have the longest history working with PHP and PHP LSAPI has the most features of all the LSAPI modules.
  
  

  #-Link-Snipped-# on the other hand is a generic webserver and works for variety of use-cases given one understands how to tune it properly.

  It is true that in some (many?) cases Apache optimization can achieve results similar to LSWS (especially if you're willing to buy hardware to make up for Apache's CPU and memory usage issues). But I feel like many people, especially experienced sysadmins, like to say what you've said — that you can tune Apache to do what LSWS does. That statement, I feel, ignores the fact that tuning Apache is not a simple task. It may be possible, but it is time-consuming, even for experienced sysadmins, and expensive if you have to pay someone else to do it.
  
  

  Would love to know what exactly does LSAPI offer which result into faster #-Link-Snipped-#performance?

  Most of the difference is actually just code optimization. In different environments (like shared hosting) the extra features, like suEXEC daemon mode which then allows for effective opcode caching, can also make a big difference.