From 4023e7f4e429179fd9c2cce4487c33646c6bd327 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: =?UTF-8?q?Lo=C3=AFc=20Hoguin?= <essen@ninenines.eu>
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2016 13:35:25 +0100
Subject: Convert the documentation to Asciidoc

A few small revisions were made, and Erlang.mk has been updated.
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 doc/src/guide/architecture.asciidoc | 48 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 48 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 doc/src/guide/architecture.asciidoc

(limited to 'doc/src/guide/architecture.asciidoc')

diff --git a/doc/src/guide/architecture.asciidoc b/doc/src/guide/architecture.asciidoc
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..416ef36
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+++ b/doc/src/guide/architecture.asciidoc
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+[[architecture]]
+== Architecture
+
+Cowboy is a lightweight HTTP server.
+
+It is built on top of Ranch. Please see the Ranch guide for more
+information.
+
+=== One process per connection
+
+It uses only one process per connection. The process where your
+code runs is the process controlling the socket. Using one process
+instead of two allows for lower memory usage.
+
+Because there can be more than one request per connection with the
+keepalive feature of HTTP/1.1, that means the same process will be
+used to handle many requests.
+
+Because of this, you are expected to make sure your process cleans
+up before terminating the handling of the current request. This may
+include cleaning up the process dictionary, timers, monitoring and
+more.
+
+=== Binaries
+
+It uses binaries. Binaries are more efficient than lists for
+representing strings because they take less memory space. Processing
+performance can vary depending on the operation. Binaries are known
+for generally getting a great boost if the code is compiled natively.
+Please see the HiPE documentation for more details.
+
+=== Date header
+
+Because querying for the current date and time can be expensive,
+Cowboy generates one `Date` header value every second, shares it
+to all other processes, which then simply copy it in the response.
+This allows compliance with HTTP/1.1 with no actual performance loss.
+
+=== Max connections
+
+By default the maximum number of active connections is set to a
+generally accepted big enough number. This is meant to prevent having
+too many processes performing potentially heavy work and slowing
+everything else down, or taking up all the memory.
+
+Disabling this feature, by setting the `{max_connections, infinity}`
+protocol option, would give you greater performance when you are
+only processing short-lived requests.
-- 
cgit v1.2.3

