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An Overview of the Boa Web Server
Gentu writes "There is a pretty new and little known, lite web server in town, named Boa. The server can run very fast on older machines, even on embedded devices, but it is only CGI-based. OSNews introduces Boa (running under Linux) and it includes some preliminary benchmarks against Apache and thttpd."
The test performance against apache using a different test program for each server. Furthermore, it looks like Boa is designed for one thing... speed. Apache is designed to be feature complete. It's like comparing apples and pumpkins.
It's called "freedom of choice".
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Wait a minute, who is "we"?
I mean, no offense, but who the hell are you to tell a programmer what she should work on? Oh wait, did I say "no offense?" I meant "plenty of offense." As long as the Boa guys are enjoying what they're doing, more power to them. Now, maybe you're whining about Slashdot writing an article on it, but that's hardly the Boa guys fault.
And, frankly, you sound like the type of person that's going to find something irritating to whine about no matter what.
Well, maybe some of us want to do work because it's fun, and we're interested in it, rather than because some random internet bozo thinks he 'needs' it.
Yeah, I can see that -- you're already trying to impose your own narrowminded "managerial" (your label, not mine) viewpoint on the people that are trying to get work done, and touting your own superiority. Whooooo, how innovative and revolutionary.
So why don't you just crawl back into your hole and write whatever code you want to, instead of whining that other people are working on things that don't benefit you personally?
Maybe...
OK, so a lot of open source projects start up to fill a gap and a lot of open source projects start up to replace a proprietary or expensive solution, but a lot start up just to try and do something in a new way or innovative way, to experiment or to learn. It's the hacker way.
OS is so productive becasue of this hacker attitude, stifle it at your peril.
Reginald Molehusband. Edinburgh, Scotland
Partly because of the fun of it, but to combat bloatware a culture of making things small, in a practical sense, needs to exist. Apache may be size X, and if the belief is embedded in coders that size X is the minimum to do a job, it won't even be -considered- by the majority that things could be done more efficiently
Even knowing a webserver exists that is 1/10th the size and runs in 1/10th the memory can give pause to thought, and keep the knowledge open that things can always be made smaller. In 1990 the entire internet was run on machines rarely quicker or more powerful than 386s or 68030s - it would be sad to see a culture of "You can't have a server online that's under 500mhz and a gig of ram" develop - without tiny coding projects like this, that's all too possible.
For the price to performance ratio apache wins.
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
And how's the scale-ability?
Hopefully boa's scalability is better than the web server they're using now.
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I agree that this will never replace Apache. However, from what I have read about it so far, it was never meant to.
I disagree on the part that this is "dead". Just like Linux, web servers are going in two different directions. The first, and most common is serving web pages for web sites as we think of them today. Public sites either giving information or selling a product.
There is a new market emerging though, that Boa will be well suited for. The advanced-embedded market. I am not talking PIC processors or having a web server in a lightbult, but the more advanced devices that need a slightly more advanced webserver, without needing things like virtual hosting. This type of web server should do very well on home routers and firewalls and such devices.
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Just like we only need one OS, one CPU architecture, one RAM standard...come on, I don't understand all the bashing BOA has received here. Sure, it's not my HTTPd of choice, nor is it for a lot more folks, that doesn't negate the fact that it's more than sufficient, yea, even perfectly tailored for others. The very thing a lot of people here are ranting about is the very thing that makes OSS different from the 'enemy'. So you don't like it, so you don't need it. Someone else does, so let it be.
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I tried to verify that, but got a division by zero error when calculating Apache's performance/price ratio. I guess it just wasn't meant to be known.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
Yeah. :-) However, even I admit that if Netcraft counted by IP address instead of by virtual hostname, thttpd's share would be much lower. There are a few huge ISPs that run it - a single thttpd process on a single CPU serving tens of thousands of hostnames. This is nice, but it's not really comparable to Apache's millions of real sites.
Before this, I used to host a medium-traffic database-driven website on an old Pentium 166 with 64 megs of RAM running -- get this -- Windows 2000 Server. And it never blinked either (except when I got Slashdotted once; that really hurt).
Anyway, in an article about a great low-overhead super efficient webserver like Boa, I'd really like to see benchmarks on systems that are actually low-end, as opposed to systems that are low-end if your other server is a quad Xeon with 16 gigs of RAM.