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Opera Unite Web Server Benchmarked

Posted by timothy on from the not-bad-for-a-bonus-feature dept.

worb writes "Opera Unite comes with a web server which is supposedly going to 'redefine the web.' But how well does it actually perform? Is it a threat to other server solutions? Someone put it to the test, and published the results. While nginx, one of the fastest web servers available, is 5 times faster, a PHP+Apache+MySQL server is only 2 times as fast. A compiled C++ server, the MadFish WebToolkit, is 6 times faster. He concludes that Opera Unite's server is impressive, and that the others come nowhere close to the ease of use."

34 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. Misleading, again by SteelRealm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Opera's Unite is not meant to refine the web as a hosting solution in the traditional sense, but as a way to make your files accessible to yourself and others through it. I don't think anyone is questioning whether it is a better hosting solution then a dedicated server. It's also worth it to note that Unite is a Alpha release with lots of bugs to be fixed and performance tuning and optimization to be done.

    1. Re:Misleading, again by bunratty · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ...a way to make your files accessible to yourself and others through it.

      Can you say "huge honking security hole"?

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    2. Re:Misleading, again by SteelRealm · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Considering how quickly Opera patches everything, I don't see this as any bigger a threat than normal browsing. People who use your Unite page to access things have only got access to what you allow them to see and what you've choicen to host through Unite.

    3. Re:Misleading, again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Amen.

      The Opera Unite service has several features so far: web server, file sharer, music streamer, fridge notes, lounge... It's direct communication for everyday users who will be able to host their own sites, files, music, photos locally on their home computers. Said content will be available as long as Unite is running. When Unite is not running or the computer is off, there's nothing being shared. Why all the fuss? it's easy to understand. Don't like it? Don't use it. The service is what it is, not a professional hosting service with backups and UPS's.

      I think it's very good for home users to have the possibility of feeling like small Internet moguls, hosting some little web site and sharing family photos with grandma :)

  2. Disturbing trend by nausea_malvarma · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm disturbed by the centralization taking place on the web, where by networks like email are replaced with proprietary walled-garden social networks, and entire webpages once written in the open html standard are being done entirely in flash. I'm starting to have hope for the future now. HMTL 5 will reduce the need for proprietary plugins, for sure. This Opera web server thing could work towards decentralizing the web as well. Sure, anybody can set up a web server to host their own content in theory, but its too difficult for average folks to do. With this technology, perhaps more people will sidestep commercial options, and host web pages on their own - meaning less reliance on geocities, google sites, ect. And thats good. It's not healthy for a few companies to have that sort of control over a medium.

    1. Re:Disturbing trend by Abcd1234 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm disturbed by the centralization taking place on the web, where by networks like email are replaced with proprietary walled-garden social networks, and entire webpages once written in the open html standard are being done entirely in flash.

      I know! For example, Facebook has made it completely impossible to deploy and host one's own website. They simply *force* you to put everything in their system. And don't get me started on the likes of Twitter, which has forced everyone to stop using Twitter in favour of their system. I mean, at least if I could *choose*, but you can't because they can control your *mind*! Yes, very disturbing indeed...

    2. Re:Disturbing trend by AnonGCB · · Score: 4, Informative

      Except that you don't need to use opera in order to access the content, you just follow a link and any browser should take you there.

      --
      http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
    3. Re:Disturbing trend by nausea_malvarma · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You aren't taking network effects into account. I'm young, and most of my friends are in their 20s. Some of them never check their emails, and insist that I send everything to them through myspace. Why? Because all of their friends use myspace too, and none of their friends email that often. So yeah, I have the choice of emailing my friends, but their dependence on myspace forces my hand. We all have a choice, but these mediums have generated enough momentum already that it's very hard to get by when using the alternatives.

    4. Re:Disturbing trend by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Informative

      So I can just download Opera and have it all work with out an Opera account? Nope, won't work, sorry. whoever is sharing HAS to have an Opera account.

      So tell me mods, how exactly is this offtopic? he claimed that it would "decentralize the web" and I pointed out in the very article that was on Slashodt yesterday, and I again quote "Although Opera Unite claims to "directly link people's personal computers together," to use it you need an account on Opera's servers, and all of your exchanges pass through Opera's servers first.That's an effective way to get around technical difficulties like NAT firewalls, but more important, it makes Opera the intermediary in your social interactions -- not Facebook, not MySpace, but Opera."

      Don't believe me? Read it yourself. The simple fact is if you have NAT there is NO WAY to use this at all without Opera servers as the MiTM, okay? And who doesn't use NAT in this day and age? Hell even my 67 year old dad who doesn't have a fricking clue about computers has a wireless router doing NAT.

      So mod me down ALL you want, I've got enough karma to burn for centuries. Did I say Opera was bad? Nope, my oldest won't even touch anything else. But don't lie and say the sky is pink when it is blue. The simple fact is you CAN'T use this new feature without an Opera account. Sorry, but it just don't work, because it was designed to go through Opera's servers. So all you are doing with Opera Unite is moving the central server from Facebook to Opera. Sorry, but that doesn't sound very revolutionary to me.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    5. Re:Disturbing trend by worb · · Score: 4, Informative

      A more thoughtful take on the subject can be found here:

      I'm surprised to see that people are still linking to this. It's basically full of errors, and was written in rage over all the hype Unite was getting. He was angry about how people just repeated Opera's claims blindly. Kind of like you are blindly referring to his blog post even though it turns out that the post is too inaccurate to really be used for anything.

      You really should read some of the comments on the page you are linking to, in order to see people correcting all the misconceptions. For example the misconception that everything goes through a proxy, as you claim it does. Furthermore Chris's comments where fun until Haavard took him down a notch on his own blog, resulting in Chris himself posting on Haavard's blog with a massively different tone.

    6. Re:Disturbing trend by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 5, Informative

      all of your exchanges pass through Opera's servers first.

      Only if you're behind NAT, and your router isn't configured to allow UPnP.

      Otherwise, individual connections are truly peer-to-peer. Opera servers don't get involved. They are only used to publish the list of services available for your account, not to access them (except for the NAT workaround).

    7. Re:Disturbing trend by pbhj · · Score: 3, Informative

      [...] he claimed that it would "decentralize the web" and I pointed out in the very article that was on Slashodt yesterday, and I again quote "Although Opera Unite claims to "directly link people's personal computers together," to use it you need an account on Opera's servers, and all of your exchanges pass through Opera's servers first.That's an effective way to get around technical difficulties like NAT firewalls, but more important, it makes Opera the intermediary in your social interactions [...] But don't lie and say the sky is pink when it is blue. The simple fact is you CAN'T use this new feature without an Opera account. Sorry, but it just don't work, because it was designed to go through Opera's servers. So all you are doing with Opera Unite is moving the central server from Facebook to Opera. Sorry, but that doesn't sound very revolutionary to me.

      You're mixing a lot of half-truths in there.Opera Unite does directly link peoples computers together. Period. It _also_ acts as an intermediary where they can't use UPnP or in other situations. Opera also creates the links that direct people to the service you're hosting from your browser.

      You _can_ use the features of Unite without an account, any browser can access my Unite fileshare with the write password and URL; same goes for accessing photos, media, chat. Oh, right, you want to host a service (with 3 clicks of your mouse!) on the internet without signing up for anything, good luck with that. Even backbone connections have peering contracts - every internet service has to sign up for something.

      Remembering that this is a first alpha I think Opera has started a mass decentralisation of the internet, the peerweb as it were. I give it a few months before Opera Unite will connect to other intermediaries and perhaps a year before you can host that same intermediary on a box inside your firewall.

  3. It's a toy... by jo42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is it a threat to other server solutions?

    In one word, No.

    In more words, can it run apps written in PHP, Ruby, Python, Java, etc. with SQL server database back ends? No.

    Can it be load-balanced, clustered, etc. on servers in a data center? Well, maybe if you tried hard enough. Heck, you do anything if you try hard enough. But in one word, No.

    1. Re:It's a toy... by SteelRealm · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not meant to act as a serious server, just to allow easy access to files and content made avaible to Opera on the user's computer. They said it's unlikely PHP and MySQL will be added, but the possiblity that they might do it is there in the future. It's a toy to attract users and to maintain those who may consider leaving the browser, and it's doing just that. Anyone who wants to share content with friends/family can easily do it, and it's incredibly handy for people who use multiple computers.

  4. Re:Still an Epic Fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...and leave all your data on someone else's server, which is exactly what Unite allows you NOT to do. Why would I pay for web hosting or let Facebook hold my data hostage when I can distribute whatever I want, including any size pictures (have you seen the size of Facebook photos?) to whomever I want using Unite?

  5. Re:So Opera web browser now runs as a system servi by worb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And yet it's still smaller than the so-called "pure browsers" ;)

  6. Re:So Opera web browser now runs as a system servi by SteelRealm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You realize it is still smaller download then Firefox and has a smaller memory footprint then all other browsers, right?

  7. Stupid benchmark by royallthefourth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The summary conflated a web server with a database and a programming language (PHP+Apache+MySQL) when discussing benchmarking of just a web server.

    I'll go ahead and assume that the article isn't worth reading.

    1. Re:Stupid benchmark by tyrione · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Java? Ruby? Python? ObjC? Do I need to go on to include the massive depth and breath that Apache 2 covers to even make this remotely worth comparing?

  8. I feel vindicated to some extent by bogaboga · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...He concludes that Opera Unite's server is impressive, and that the others come nowhere close to the ease of use...

    When I suggested that Apache needed some thing near to easy configuration, I was labeled a troll and requested not to tinker with such a server if I did not know what I was doing. By the way, I know Apache has some configuration GUIs but none comes close to Opera's offer.

    In fact, I was castigated for being one of those who crave "point and click" interfaces that are "responsible" for most of the chaos on the internet.

    I am happy that I have one fellow who agrees with me. I will not be surprised if Opera's web server snatches market share from the established ones.

    1. Re:I feel vindicated to some extent by chdig · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Opera's web server has a completely different target market than apache, and is so completely different that to compare Opera to Apache is like comparing benchmarks of serving static content to that which comes from a database -- yes, another silly comparison that TFA for some unknown reason actually makes. Apples ain't oranges!

      As others have mentioned, to serve pages to anyone other than yourself, the requests will be sent through (and approved by) Opera's servers. Unite itself isn't open source, apache is. Apache can do almost anything any web developer can dream of. Unite is one dimensional.

      As for your configuration "argument", are you still trying to install Apache from source or something? a WAMP install will put apache/mysql/php on your computer in a minute or two. Toss a blog app into the web folder, use a browser to enter its connection settings, and voila! you've got yourself a basic, but dynamic blog online in minutes, just for one example.

      But besides using it for web development, running a website with PHP/any dynamic language off your home desktop would be exposing yourself to some serious risks, which is again yet another reason that a Unite/Apache+PHP comparison is completely senseless.

      What is truly wrong is that TFA and its "benchmarks" made it onto /., where most of us actually know that dynamic!=static content. A far better, and insightful article on Unite was written by this guy: http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2009/06/16/thoughts-on-opera-unite/

      --
      The Opera fanboys are out tonight, and with mod points to spare. Hmm, it's not even a full moon.

  9. Re:Still an Epic Fail by rs79 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "So what? It's a somewhat slow web server. It's easy, guys. If you want to leave your home machine naked to the net, use real and tested server software. If you want to do all the tasks done by Unite but easier, get cheap or free web hosting and a Facebook page."

    I'm guessing you haven't actually tried the software. But you know about problems with it already even though it isn't actually a "webserver/daemon" in the classic sense of the word.

    That's kinda like saying "I don't like asparagus but I've never tried it because I don't like it".

    Maybe it does have a security hole in it. But shouldn't we actually find out first before we just guess and assume that it does?

    Security hole. Pffft. BindOutlookXPIEExcel. Life goes on.

    --
    Need Mercedes parts ?
  10. Re:Still an Epic Fail by AmigaHeretic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    >>If you don't trust it on a remote host, it probably shouldn't be web accessible.

    Yeah, but maybe this product (and ones already out there and soon to follow) will allow us to expand our idea of what should be web accessible.

    For example I wouldn't make my entire MP3 collection web accessible using Google storage space. Why because even though my intention is to use it only so "I" can access all my music anywhere I go, Google might not see it that way. (Or what ever company I happen to have storing my data). With Unite and a few clicks I can have my music available to me and not have to worry about the company hosting it thinking I might be breaking the law.

  11. Re:So Opera web browser now runs as a system servi by Vectronic · · Score: 3, Informative

    Also, with all this extra stuff, it still runs faster and smoother than any previous version of their browser, there is absolutely no feeling of 'bloat'... and when you turn something off, it stays that way, Turbo, Unite, Mail, Widgets, Dragonfly, etc...

    v10 alpha was already faster than v9.64, and almost every new snapshot has been quicker/better than the previous.

    It's memory footprint isn't really better, but isn't worse than most others... mine's been running for about 4 days since the last time I closed/re-opened it
    Current: 161MB
    Peak: 398MB
    VM: 205MB
    Handles: 708
    Threads: 26

    But I don't care about that, from a cold start it launches in under a second, whereas Safari and Chrome take about 4, IE and FF 3.5 take about 9, I've ran into 0 problems with webpages with Opera v10, but FF 3.5 (just as Beta as Opera) won't even allow Slashdot to work half the time, however it is a bit faster on some sites, like Facebook... Plus, Opera hides in the systray, and stays completely idle until i need it, or it shows me a new RSS, or email... making it show up instantly when asked, which is more important (to me) than any memory footprint.

  12. What is this juvenile fascination with speed? by presidenteloco · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How dumb, or seriously ADD,
    do you have to be, when the major question you ask about
    a new technology is: Yeah, but how fast is it?

    "We've invented this program that is smarter than the average bear"

    "Yeah, but how fast is it?"

    "You don't understand! This baby even knows that you're not SUPPOSED
    to fight forest fires!"

    "Yeah, but how fast is it?"

    Seriously, these speed evaluations are irrelevant, boring, and inane to
    the extreme. How about some evaluation of the possible uses this new
    technology will be put to, and how its abilities to support these uses
    compares to other competing or similar technologies.

    "Look at this new amp we've got! Look at this. It goes up to 11! Unbelievable!"

    "Yeah, but how fast does it go pedal to the metal, man?"

    --

    Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
  13. Re:Still an Epic Fail by Fallingcow · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you want to do all the tasks done by Unite but easier, get cheap or free web hosting and a Facebook page.

    I can set up 40GB+ of music to play via a decent-looking web interface for anyone I send a password and URL to in less than a minute and with 5 or 6 clicks using my Facebook account and some shared web hosting? 'Cuz I did that earlier today with Opera Unite.

    I went in to this skeptical, and I barely even used Opera before this (I'm a web developer and, though I admire Opera, I need the tools available in Firefox) but it only took about 5 minutes of tinkering with this thing for me to be sold on it. I believe my exact words on testing the media sharing were "whoa, fuckin' cool!"

  14. I Call Shenanigans by mpapet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Can you say "huge honking security hole"?

    The great news is there are viable replacements for this reference to Microsoft's operating system. Debian, BSD's, maybe some other Linux distro are more than capable of serving and Opera runs on all of them.

    Another Opera summary that's mostly flamebait. That's disappointing because it's a good idea whose time has been very long in coming.

    --
    http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
  15. Re:So Opera web browser now runs as a system servi by dreemernj · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Mileage always varies. I use Opera because if I open up 6 or 7 tabs of the pages I usually visit in Opera, it takes up 90 megs of RAM. If I open them in Firefox they take up around 750 megs. For others the results could probably be the exact opposite.

    I will say that, as a long time Opera user, Opera 10 is turning into one of the best releases they've ever done. It outperforms Opera 9.x in any way that matters to me. Speed, memory usage, stability. 9.6 was starting to get on my nerves and I was beginning to use Chrome more and more. But 10 has been a dream.

    --
    1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
  16. Re:Still an Epic Fail by ardor · · Score: 4, Funny

    I can set up 40GB+ of music to play via a decent-looking web interface for anyone I send a password and URL to

    Nobody expects the RIAA inquisition!

    --
    This sig does not contain any SCO code.
  17. The real speed test... by bgspence · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How long does it take someone unfamiliar with a each web server take to download the required software and serve the first page?

    I bet Opera Unite beats the other solutions by a mile.

  18. Re:So Opera web browser now runs as a system servi by BikeHelmet · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is an Alpha or Beta. Opera 9.64 (final) is only 5.3MB large.

    On my computer Firefox consumes way more memory than Opera - but it has so many extensions and plugins installed, that I'd be surprised if it didn't.

  19. Yeah, right . . . by siloko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    and most of my friends are in their 20s. Some of them never check their emails

    I'm guessing none of your friends either work or are at college. Try telling your boss or University sysadmin that you don't want customer emails or system notices because you won't read them unless they are sent via mySpace . . . No job/Slap around the face will quickly ensue!

    1. Re:Yeah, right . . . by d3ac0n · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, despite the ad hominem-ness of the post, his point stands: the "real world" still very much uses, and expects you to use, e-mail.

      Indeed.

      I don't know of any White Collar jobs that do NOT revolve around e-mail as a primary communication source, and even some Blue collar jobs are going that way.

      In fact, in many companies the on-site use of "social networking" websites such as My Space and Facebook are strictly prohibited and/or filtered out using Websense or some such network product.

      So truly, It sounds very much like nausea_malvarma's friends are all college kids about to get whacked by the reality of having to always use regular e-mail.

      Oh, and one last thing, it isn't ad-hominem if it's both true and relevant to the discussion at hand.

      --
      Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
  20. Re:So Opera web browser now runs as a system servi by worb · · Score: 3, Interesting
    You are comparing apples and oranges. The 10 MB version of Opera has 30 languages included. Compare the basic English version, and the story is quite different.

    I don't know about memory usage. In my experience, Opera does better than any other browser there.