C10k problem

The C10k problem refers to the problem of optimising web server software to handle a large number of clients at the same time (hence the name C10k - ten thousand connections). The problem of web server optimisation has been studied because a number of factors must be considered to allow a web server to support many clients. This can involve a combination of operating system constraints and web server software limitations.

While there are some specialized web servers that can handle more than ten thousand client connections, most web servers currently handle at most ten thousand clients simultaneously.

The problem's name is a numeronym for "ten thousand clients".

Servers which address the problem

Several web servers have been developed to counter the C10K problem:

• nginx, which relies on an event-driven (asynchronous) architecture, instead of threads, to handle requests (WordPress.com uses nginx to solve the C10K problem)
• Lighttpd, which relies on an asynchronous architecture to handle requests
• Cherokee, a lightweight web server
• Tornado, a non-blocking web server and web application framework written in Python
• Apache Deft, asynchronous, non-blocking web server running on the JVM
• JBoss Netty, a NIO client server framework which enables quick and easy development of network applications such as protocol servers and clients
• Node.js, asynchronous, non-blocking web server running on Google's V8 JavaScript engine
• EventMachine, an asynchronous, non-blocking web server running on Ruby EventMachine
• Yaws, a web server written in Erlang; profiting from Erlang's extremely lightweight processes.
• Medusa (web server), a non-blocking web server library written in Python
• IIS (web server), Microsoft's flagship web server, through the use of asynchronous requests, as demonstrated by 3rd party components such as WebSync
• Jetty (Web server) Asynchronous Java servlet container

External links

• The C10K problem