From fd3c40c7ee7d5efdd75481876e457e723e4b4e20 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: =?UTF-8?q?Lo=C3=AFc=20Hoguin?= Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 11:23:58 +0200 Subject: Wrap-up the user guide --- guide/architecture.md | 52 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 52 insertions(+) create mode 100644 guide/architecture.md (limited to 'guide/architecture.md') diff --git a/guide/architecture.md b/guide/architecture.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b799a37 --- /dev/null +++ b/guide/architecture.md @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +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