Three platforms, three stories. Apache, Nginx (pronounced as “Engine-X”) and Litespeed are unique ways of completing a common goal. Each has a history but we will let you decide which is best as we look at all three today in this post.
Apache – The Pioneer
Apache is the oldest of the three services in this post. Originally beginning in 1995, Apache is about as old as the public internet itself. It took off because of its aspects of simplicity in deployment and maintenance. Apache is old, and when it was built, there wasn’t nearly as much traffic going over the internet as there is almost 25 years later.
Nginx – The Answer
Nginx was created in 2002 released open source in 2004. It began taking on the Apache domination of the web hosting server architecture. The big difference between Nginx and Apache is how it handles connections.
Apache creates a new process, or a new worker, for every connection that reaches it. This isn’t a big deal in 1995 or 1996, but it began bogging down server performance as the world wide web expanded exponentially. Nginx on the other hand, uses an “event-driven” architecture. This new method allows one process, or worker, to handle thousands of concurrent connections. You can probably already tell how that is going to drive Nginx into the market as a major competitor. That’s exactly what it did.
Enter Litespeed
Building on the architecture of Nginx is Litespeed or LSWS – LiteSpeed Web Servers. Litespeed is an event driven web architecture, giving it the speed advantage over it’s older Apache brother.
One of the great things about Litespeed is it keeps things simple. Nginx can get complicated. Here is a quote from their website when it comes to development of the Nginx platform: “NGINX module developers need to be very careful to create efficient and accurate code, without any resource leakage, and to interact appropriately with the complex event‑driven kernel to avoid blocking operations.”
Not quite as easy as configuring an httpd.conf file is it? Litespeed takes advantage of this and uses elements like that simple conf file. This makes it very attractive for all kinds of developers. It makes it more of a plug and play instead of configuring a new architecture and foreign modules.
Litespeed also delivers additional speed with the LSAPI, which accelerates content delivery. For more info on why Litespeed is faster than other architectures, check out this post. It has more facts and figures and draws out the examples well.
Wrap
Here is a lightning quick breakdown of these three platforms. Kiiff.com uses Litespeed for, well light speed content delivery and page load times. We encourage you to further explore and possibly transition to a better platform for your needs.
Happy hosting