fphttpserver with concurrent connections
lazarus / 38-Networking and Web Programming

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Graeme · 2014-08-08 06:57

Hi,

I've only used the fphttpserver component for a single user embedded
web server application. For a different part of the product I'm
working on, I'm trying to reduce the installation effort by dropping
the Apache Web Server install and complex configuration. The embedded
fphttpserver worked so well in the embedded product, I'm wondering if
it could work on a slightly bigger scale on a LAN.

Is fphttpserver up to the task to handle 30-60 concurrent connections?
The product runs in a classroom style environment where learners will
log in and use the system for a hour at a time. The web server will
mainly server Adobe Flash content.

I'm in the process of writing a test project where I can hopefully
start 30+ HTTP clients and hit the fphttpserver web server for a set
duration to see how it copes.

If somebody has already tested this, I would be very grateful to hear
about your experiences.

Regards,
  Graeme

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hinst · 2014-08-08 08:43

fphttpserver has two modes, sync and async, in sync mode it uses only
one thread and it won't process next request until it finished with
the previous one, so no concurrent connnections

in async mode fphttpserver creates a new thread for each request.
Alternatively, you could derive some base class (don't remember
exactly which one) and create a hybrid web server component which
would use thread pool and keep some number of threads always running,
that would reduce cpu usage....

In your case, however, the solution would be really simple: find where
fp-http-web-server creates thread in code and set stack size. Why?
Because by default stack size for new threads if rather large, like
either 4 or 16 megabytes, so 60*4 would be 240 megabytes of RAM; but
in my experience 128 kilobytes of stack is enough for pretty much
everything where you don't have much recursion;;; so 60*128k = 7.5
megabytes of RAM only

So yes, I think using unmodified fphttpserver to handle 60 concurrent
connections should work just fine if you reduce stask size, otherwise
you will be wasting lots of RAM

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Graeme · 2014-08-08 20:45

Thanks for information, I'll use it going forward.

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Leledumbo · 2014-08-09 03:37

Quote from: Graeme Geldenhuys on August 08, 2014, 10:45:33 pmThanks
for information, I'll use it going forward.
Please post your result later, I'd like to see some numbers,
especially since it doesn't support keep-alive yet

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aradeonas · 2015-08-15 07:27

Quote from: Leledumbo on August 09, 2014, 05:37:45 amQuote from:
Graeme Geldenhuys on August 08, 2014, 10:45:33 pmThanks for
information, I'll use it going forward.
Please post your result later, I'd like to see some numbers,
especially since it doesn't support keep-alive yet
Me too.In the end what you used for this situation?