-
Benchmark Overview
We tested HTTP/2 implementations from LiteSpeed Web Server, nginx, and Apache, to see how they would compare when loading WordPress. LiteSpeed beat nginx by up to 12X, and blew Apache out of the water by a whopping 84X! The best available WordPress cache plugins were used for each server: LSCache for LiteSpeed, FastCGI Cache for nginx, and W3 Total Cache for Apache.
We followed the methodology laid out on http2benchmark.org, which means our results are verifiable and repeatable.
Summary
HTTP/2 Test Results
h2load -n 100000 -c 100 -t 1 -T 5 -m 10 -H 'Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate' https://domain.com/wordpress/Server Requests / Sec MB / Sec Failures Header Compression LiteSpeed 69618.5 270.38 0 96.64% Nginx 6025.3 24.5 0 26.54% Apache 826.5 3.08 0 88.9% LiteSpeed Web Server performs 12X faster than Nginx and 84X faster than Apache when loading WordPress.
HTTP 1.1 Test Results
wrk -c 100 -t 1 -d 5s -H 'Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate' https://domain.com/wordpress/Server Requests / Sec MB / Sec Failures Header Compression LiteSpeed 28360.3 119.33 N/A N/A Nginx 5730 24.15 N/A N/A Apache 1000.56 4.09 N/A N/A LiteSpeed Web Server performs 5X faster than Nginx and 28X faster than Apache when loading WordPress.
Test Environment
-
Server Tested:
- LiteSpeed Web Server v5.4.1
- nginx v1.16.1
- Apache v2.4.41
-
WordPress:
- WordPress version: 5.2.2
- LiteSpeed cache: LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress
- nginx cache: FastCGI Cache
- Apache cache: W3 Total Cache
-
Client Machine:
- Memory Size: 1GB
- CPU number: 1
- CPU Threads: 1
- CPU Model: Virtual CPU 6db7dc0e7704
- Disk: NVMe SSD
-
Server Machine:
- Memory Size: 1GB
- CPU number: 1
- CPU Threads: 1
- CPU Model: Virtual CPU 6db7dc0e7704
- Disk: NVMe SSD
-
Network:
- Traffic: 9.02 Gbits/sec
- Latency: 0.302 ms
-
Cloud VM:
- Vultr High Frequency Compute 1GB VM
-
-
Benchmark Overview
Test Results
We compared the speed at which different web servers and caching platforms respond to requests for WordPress pages on a cPanel setup, using both non-keep-alive and keep-alive connections.
Our test platforms included:
- LiteSpeed Enterprise (LSWS) using the popular W3 Total Cache and WPRocket WordPress cache plugins, as well as with our LiteSpeed Cache Plugin for WordPress.
- Apache using the W3 Total Cache and WPRocket WordPress cache plugins.
Our results showed Apache (with keep-alive enabled) peaking around 1,300 and 700 requests per second with W3TC and WPRocket, respectively.
With the exact same setup, LSWS with W3TC and WPRocket delivered around 4,800 requests per second, an improvement factor of over 2.6x or 6x respectively.
Using the LiteSpeed Cache Plugin for WordPress with LSWS easily handled close to 5,200 requests per second.
Summary
LSWS with LSCache Performance Gain
Concurrent Users Keep-Alive Apache / WPRocket Apache / W3TC Nginx / FCGI LSWS / W3TC LSWS / WPRocket 10 No 5.6x 3.2x 4.9x 1.2x 1.2x Yes 7.4x 4.0x 6.4x 1.1x 1.1x 100 No 5.7x 3.2x 5.0x 1.2x 1.2x Yes 6.3x 3.5x 5.0x 1.1x 1.1x Notes:
- Default configurations were used when possible.
- Rewrite rule caching was used for W3TC and WPRocket to ensure maximum peformance.
- The test was performed over a 10GBps network connection to make sure network bandwidth did not become a bottleneck.
- The benchmark simulated serving 10,000 requests to 10 and 100 users.
Test Environment
-
Software:
- LiteSpeed Enterprise 5.1.13
- Nginx 1.10.3
- Apache 2.4.25
- PHP 7.1.2
- cPanel 62
- FastCGI Cache
- WPRocket 2.9.8.1
- W3TC 0.9.5.2
- LSCache WordPress 1.0.14.1
-
Server hardware specs:
- Intel Xeon X5660 Single Core @ 2.80GHz
- 2GB RAM
- 50GB HDD
- CloudLinux 7.3
-
Client hardware specs:
- Intel Xeon E5-1620 Dual Core @ 3.60GHz
- 2GB RAM CentOS 6.8 with OpenVZ kernel 2.6.32-042stab116.1
- Intel X540 10GBASE-T on board NIC
-
Network Switch:
- Netgear XS708E-100NES 8-ports 10G switch
-