ab - Apache HTTP Server Benchmarking Tool

ab is a tool for benchmarking your Apache Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server. It is designed to give you an impression of how your current Apache installation performs. This especially shows you how many requests per second your Apache installation is capable of serving. (from ab 2.0 documentation)

Documentation of ab utility:

• Apache 1.3: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/programs/ab.html
• Apache 2.0: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/programs/ab.html
• Apache 2.2: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/programs/ab.html

-- Contributors: MartinCleaver, PeterThoeny

Discussions

Being somewhat of a Newbie, I did an extensive search for ab, ApacheBench, the Apache Benchmark program until I discovered that it was already on my RedHat 7.2 system. (/usr/sbin/ab - this is not in the path for normal users).

There is also a Windows version of the program available at: http://www.remotecommunications.com/apache/ab/

-- BjornGraabek - 07 Dec 2001

Find attached a quick guide to perform a benchmark from your machine against a apache web server.

Most useful arguments are:

• -c -- number of concurrent clients
• -n -- number of total requests
• -C -- a cookie string
• -A -- Authen info eg 'user:password'

Example:

/usr/local/apache/bin/ab -c 8 -n 100 -A 'guest:mypassword' -C "User=id&1234; Pref=lang&de" "www.myhost.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome"

-- WolfgangAlper - 24 Feb 2005