Express performance issues

[Strauteka]

I have created a simple example of a simple node http get vs express GET and end up with a severe performance drop.
Is this expected or is there a bug in the code?
https://github.com/Strauteka/express-performance-drop

[dpopp07]

Will you share your results here so folks looking at this issue can see what you're seeing without the need to clone and run your repo?

[Strauteka]

Plain node. The results range from 21-28k req/sec depending on the processes on the work computer.

ab -n 10000 -c 10 -T 'application/json'   http://localhost:8080/temp/test/
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 1901567 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking localhost (be patient)
Completed 1000 requests
Completed 2000 requests
Completed 3000 requests
Completed 4000 requests
Completed 5000 requests
Completed 6000 requests
Completed 7000 requests
Completed 8000 requests
Completed 9000 requests
Completed 10000 requests
Finished 10000 requests


Server Software:        
Server Hostname:        localhost
Server Port:            8080

Document Path:          /temp/test/
Document Length:        17 bytes

Concurrency Level:      10
Time taken for tests:   0.376 seconds
Complete requests:      10000
Failed requests:        0
Total transferred:      920000 bytes
HTML transferred:       170000 bytes
Requests per second:    26584.79 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       0.376 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       0.038 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          2388.48 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0    0   0.0      0       1
Processing:     0    0   0.1      0       1
Waiting:        0    0   0.1      0       1
Total:          0    0   0.1      0       1

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%      0
  66%      0
  75%      0
  80%      0
  90%      0
  95%      1
  98%      1
  99%      1
 100%      1 (longest request)

Express. 9 - 10k req/sec

ab -n 10000 -c 10 -T 'application/json'   http://localhost:8080/temp/test/
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 1901567 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking localhost (be patient)
Completed 1000 requests
Completed 2000 requests
Completed 3000 requests
Completed 4000 requests
Completed 5000 requests
Completed 6000 requests
Completed 7000 requests
Completed 8000 requests
Completed 9000 requests
Completed 10000 requests
Finished 10000 requests


Server Software:        
Server Hostname:        localhost
Server Port:            8080

Document Path:          /temp/test/
Document Length:        17 bytes

Concurrency Level:      10
Time taken for tests:   1.085 seconds
Complete requests:      10000
Failed requests:        0
Total transferred:      2240000 bytes
HTML transferred:       170000 bytes
Requests per second:    9214.32 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       1.085 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       0.109 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          2015.63 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0    0   0.0      0       0
Processing:     0    1   0.3      1       4
Waiting:        0    1   0.3      1       4
Total:          0    1   0.3      1       4

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%      1
  66%      1
  75%      1
  80%      1
  90%      1
  95%      1
  98%      2
  99%      2
 100%      4 (longest request)

[bjohansebas]

At this moment, I think this is what we would expect, given that Express does more than just send the content. Express applies the ETag, adds new headers like Content-Type and Content-Length, and performs certain validations that can make it a bit slower. We hope to improve performance in Express 6/7 in general.