[WinMac] Re: Performance of Apple Internet Server

Kyle Johnson(kyle.johnson[at]duke.edu)
Sat, 14 Nov 1998 08:21:14 -0500

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At 04:38 AM -0500 11/13/1998, Antonio Fernandez Martinez wrote:
>In our department we have an Apple Internet Server at 120MH running WebStar
>3.0. We feel that it is not performing well: at about 1.5K/s. Is this the
>usuall performance of AIS?. Can be obtained a substantial gain with a NT
>box?, or better move to MkLinux?.

Antonio,

You didn't happen to mention what system software you are running, but that
can have a big impact on WebSTARs performance. The improvements in
OpenTransport under 8.1 and 8.5 have really helped our WebSTAR performance.
You may also want to look at a product called Nitro from Clearway
<http://www.clearway.com>. It reduces the latency and increases WebSTAR's
response times as well.

Now, if you are thinking about making a hardware switch, you need to make a
decision about which OS you would be most comftable using/supporting.
There are basically three choices:

1- Upgrade to a newer Apple server. Apple doesn't have an Internet bundle
any longer (at least not in the USA), but since you have WebSTAR already
that's not a big deal. One of the new Apple Workgroup Servers running a
G3/300 (which is what we run here) will knock your socks off. We serve
about 16 virtual sites off this box (plus an SSL server) with no noticable
performance issues.

2- Keep your old equipment and run Linux. If you're comfortable with Linux
and aren't using any WebSTAR specific plugins (like Netcloak or Tango) this
is definitely a cost advantage, since both Linux and Apache are free. If
you're not a Linux person, you should probably steer clear of this.

3- Buy a Wintel PC running NT and migrate to IIS or Netscape Enterprise
server. As with Linux, if you're not familar with NT, I would steer clear
of this. The support costs to setup, configure, and support a new NT
server in addition to the new hardware would probably be more than if you
went with option #1, and I'm not sure you'd see a large enough improvement
to make it worth while. Now if you've got NT experience, than this might
be the way to go.

One last thing. The question you really need to answer is this. Is my web
server serving pages fast enough to meet my users needs. If the answer is
yes, than I wouldn't worry about any numbers or statistics. Stick with
what you got.

Hope that helps.

Kyle

--- Kyle Johnson kyle.johnson@duke.edu Manager, Information Systems http://www.stuaff.duke.edu Duke University Student Affairs ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I think animal testing is a terrible idea. They get all nervous and give the wrong answers. *A bit of Fry and Laurie*

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