| Igor Chudov 2007-08-31, 7:11 pm |
| I run algebra.com. It is not a terribly busy site, but it is a Web 2.0
kind of site -- users are cooperating etc -- and handles perhaps 14 or
so requests per second at peak demand.
My problem was that my httpd servers were large due to running a lot
of my homebrew mod_perl code (doing symbolic math, formula rendering
into images etc). So I cannot run too many of them.
Despite being large, my server can easily serve answers quickly. The
problem is that clients were slow to read the data, and quickly used
up available httpd's, locking out other users. It was intermittent,
but very annoying. Server seemed down, whereas in fact it was sitting
idle, waiting until some XXXXXXX finishes downloading 28 things
simultaneously to his 14.4k modem halfway around the world.
Perlbal solved ALL my problems. Now apache serves on localhost only,
perlbal is in the middle, acting as reverse proxy. When a request
comes, perlbal quickly talks to my server and then takes its time to
send the data to all users regardless of the # of connections, speeds
etc.
I am in "shock and awe" and am very impressed with this program.
One thing that I did not find anywhere was documentation. I just stole
a config file from the web and modified, but I am sure that I am
missing 90% of available functionality.
Anyway, this is a small note of thanks.
i
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