Web Servers: Architecture and Tuning
Web Servers: Architecture and Tuning Web servers are the front line for delivering pages and APIs. They manage many client connections, parse requests, and send responses fast. A good architecture balances speed, reliability, and resources. The right setup depends on traffic patterns, latency goals, and hardware. Key architecture patterns: Event-driven, single process models handle many connections with a small memory footprint. Multi-process or multi-threaded models offer isolation and simplicity, at the cost of more memory. Reverse proxies and load balancers sit in front, distributing work and improving resilience. Caching proxies and CDN links reduce repeated work and speed up responses. TLS termination can take crypto work away from backends and simplify certificates. Tuning areas you can tune without changing applications: ...