Case Study: Boosting Apache with khttpd

One enhancement added to the new 2.4 kernel is the http kernel daemon, khttpd. This daemon is a very basic Web server that handles static Web pages, copying them to the network without processing. Some of you might be thinking that this is overkill, a kernel daemon Web server. But if you think about it this way, it makes sense:

  • Many Web sites use mostly static pages.

  • Static pages are just copied to the network unchanged.

  • Apache, or any other Web server, has to call on the kernel to perform the actual copy to network anyway (after processing the file itself, often a lengthy process).

The kernel Web daemon just copies static pages to the network, bypassing the overhead of a large program like Apache and all ...

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