lighttpd vs. apache2

Current RHEL-4 ES server install on an old AMD Athlon 800 with 512M RAM – nothing else running, so all the horsepower is going to serving a tiny index file. In addition, during the lighttpd run, the server did not even break a load average of 1.00 – the apache2 run jacked the server up to a load above 30.00:

michael@ares: ~ $ /usr/sbin/ab -n 100000 -c 100 http://10.6.203.170/
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.0.41-dev <$Revision: 1.141 $> apache-2.0
Copyright (c) 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Copyright (c) 1998-2002 The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/
Benchmarking 10.6.203.170 (be patient)
Completed 10000 requests
Completed 20000 requests
Completed 30000 requests
Completed 40000 requests
Completed 50000 requests
Completed 60000 requests
Completed 70000 requests
Completed 80000 requests
Completed 90000 requests
Finished 100000 requests

Server Software: lighttpd/1.4.11
Server Hostname: 10.6.203.170
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /
Document Length: 21 bytes
Concurrency Level: 100
Time taken for tests: 45.660310 seconds
Complete requests: 100000
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 25400000 bytes
HTML transferred: 2100000 bytes
Requests per second: 2190.09 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 45.660 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 0.457 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 543.23 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 0 0.8 0 42
Processing: 3 45 31.2 40 553
Waiting: 2 44 31.0 39 552
Total: 5 45 31.1 40 553
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 40
66% 40
75% 40
80% 40
90% 41
95% 48
98% 176
99% 187
100% 553 (longest request)

michael@ares: ~ $ /usr/sbin/ab -n 100000 -c 100 http://10.6.203.170/
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.0.41-dev <$Revision: 1.141 $> apache-2.0
Copyright (c) 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Copyright (c) 1998-2002 The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/
Benchmarking 10.6.203.170 (be patient)
Completed 10000 requests
Completed 20000 requests
Completed 30000 requests
Completed 40000 requests
Completed 50000 requests
Completed 60000 requests
Completed 70000 requests
Completed 80000 requests
Completed 90000 requests
Finished 100000 requests

Server Software: Apache/2.0.52
Server Hostname: 10.6.203.170
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /
Document Length: 18 bytes
Concurrency Level: 100
Time taken for tests: 153.151438 seconds
Complete requests: 100000
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 28200564 bytes
HTML transferred: 1800036 bytes
Requests per second: 652.95 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 153.151 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 1.532 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 179.82 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 0 0.5 0 65
Processing: 6 151 225.1 148 39230
Waiting: 5 150 217.2 148 39230
Total: 9 151 225.1 148 39230
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 148
66% 149
75% 150
80% 150
90% 156
95% 163
98% 175
99% 191
100% 39230 (longest request)