Nginx just became the most used web server among the top 1000 websites

Re:Nginx just became the most used web server among the top ... by ameswarb on Wednesday July 03, 2013 @11:06AM (#5984988)

Apache is a process- and thread-driven application, but Nginx is event-driven. The practical effect of this design difference is that a small number of Nginx "worker" processes can plow through enormous stacks of requests without waiting on each other and without synchronizing; they just "close their eyes" and eat the proverbial elephant as fast as they can, one bite at a time.
Apache, by contrast, approaches large numbers of requests by spinning off more processes to handle them, typically consuming a lot of RAM as it does so. Apache looks at the elephant and thinks about how big it is as it tucks into its meal, and sometimes Apache gets a little anxious about the size of its repast. Nginx, on the other hand, just starts chomping.

The difference is summed up succinctly in a quote by Chris Lea on the Why Use Nginx? page: "Apache is like Microsoft Word, it has a million options but you only need six. Nginx does those six things, and it does five of them 50 times faster than Apache."

Source: http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/11/a-faster-web-server-...

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Re:Nginx just became the most used web server among the top ... by antihero on Wednesday July 03, 2013 @11:46AM (#5985318)

Isn't Apache's default MPM event driven since 2.4 anyway?

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Re:Nginx just became the most used web server among the top ... by FooBarWidget on Wednesday July 03, 2013 @12:01PM (#5985420)

event_mpm is only partially evented. Thanks to the Apache module API, which assumes blocking I/O, it's impossible for Apache to be fully evented. That said, event_mpm handles a lot of the important cases where evented I/O is desired.

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