There's a plethora of benchmarks out there, comparing Apache, nginx, lighttpd, LiteSpeed/ OpenLiteSpeed, Cherokee etc.
Unfortunately, it seems that most of the benchmarks are of the "small static file" type, which is quite useless...who uses a webserver to serve small static files?
How come nobody runs benchmarks for DEFAULT installs of php applications like:
- WordPress
- Drupal
- phpBB
- Menalto Gallery
- Magento
- OpenCart
etc
This would be a much better indication of what works best under real-usage type conditions, and would give folks a much better sense of the most appropriate server for their needs.
The above popular php applications would probably cover the needs of a huge chunk of webserver users.
Sure, in this kind of benchmark, the performance of MySQL, PHP, etc would come into play and we won't get RAW performance figures for the webserver. But who really cares for RAW numbers anyway? Folks are really only concerned about comparative performance, and that's why they check out benchmarks.
If we start doing this kind of benchmarks, we might finally arrive at the conclusion that server comparisons are moot as there aren't significant performance differences between competing products and that there are other items in the infrastructure/setup that need much more optimization attention.
I am sure that folks who run benchmarks are smart and know all of the above...so how come we still continue getting worthless "small static file" benchmarks?