On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 3:27 PM, Matt <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 3:03 PM, Dean Landolt <[email protected]>wrote: > >> On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 12:35 PM, Matt <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 12:01 PM, Chris Scribner <[email protected]>wrote: >>> >>>> On the topic of "why use node to service static files"... >>>> >>>> Because if you don't need to understand, configure, and maintain an >>>> extra piece of software in your stack, things get simpler. >>>> >>> >>> On a very basic level yes, but there are more advantages to using a >>> front-end nginx server than there are this one downside of "it's another >>> piece of software". >>> >> >> That's a value judgement that you can't possibly make for other people. >> Nor are you in any position to understand what is *good enough* for >> other people's use cases. >> > > I'm trying to stick to facts. But sure, if you weighed the pros of running > a proxy front end extremely low against the con of having 1 more piece of > software running, then you may come out with having a proxy as a negative. > But I would hope people are aware of all the benefits before making that > choice. Having one more piece of software in place is a con you have to > deal with once. The rest of the benefits you gain occur all the time: > > - Ability to proxy to multiple different backends as your site expands > (e.g. maybe even mixing technologies, such as Rack/Sinatra and Node). >
Proxying and load balancing, eh? That's wonderful if you can succinctly express all your logic here in a clunky declarative config file. Yes, it's better than apache, but let's not kid ourselves -- couldn't a lot of that be made substantially more efficient with a more suitable tool for this logic? So if node makes a good static file server it makes an even better proxy. Perhaps moreso for LB. > - A well tested, battle hardened static file server with support for all > of HTTP already coded in (e.g. will your Node file server do > If-Modified-Since? ETags? Gzip compress on the fly? > It could. And I suspect there'll be a lib for that (done in c) some day. Your use of the word "battle hardened" seems to preclude the use of anything new. That's your prerogative, and perhaps sound advice, but you're wielding it like a sledgehammer. There's room for nuance here. > Support sendfile()? > Perhaps eventually. > Log correctly when scaled to multiple CPUs? Support Accept headers?) > Of course node supports accept headers. You're just thinking purely terms of static files -- there's not a lot of win in conneg there. But since you mention it yes, we really should be doing conneg. You need a more complex content processing pipeline to support this properly. Something like what node can give you. > - When you restart or take down your Node process for maintenance of some > sort, do your users see a spinny beachball or a nice "Site is down for > Maintenance" page which nginx can easily deliver? > And you need nginx for this? > There's probably a couple more I forgot, but those are the biggies. > And each one could be accomplished with a module or a small amount of javascript. > If node can get 10-50% faster at serving static files, then that's X >>>> number of more deployments that don't need to complicate their >>>> infrastructure more than it needs to be. >>>> >>> >>> I can almost guarantee you there are no deployments where this is a >>> limiting factor. >>> >> >> What? Serving static files? Exactly. >> > > Right. I've never once said Node is too slow at serving static files. > Perhaps you misread my posts? > No, you've consistently said that Node will never be as fast as nginx and implied that because of that you should *of course* have nginx in front of node. It's this implication I take issue with. I'm not saying we should all use node for this. What I'm replying to is your consistent, belligerent insistence that node will never be good enough for these use cases (in spite of the evidence, including your admission that static files aren't the bottleneck). That's ridiculous. -- Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en
