Why does Tomcat spend too much time before process a request?

[Vicente Martínez <vm...@es.wanadoo.com>]

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Hi everybody,

We have tested Tomcat under stress conditions, to see how it works handling
hundreds of concurrent requests.

Our system is using Apache as static content server and tomcat as dynamic
content server (jsp & servlet)

We have measured ...

A. the time the request takes to go from the client to the Apache server.
B. the time the request is in Apache server before an Apache process gets
it.
C. the time an Apache process takes to redirect the request to Tomcat
server.
D. the time the request is in Tomcat server before a Tomcat process gets
it.
E. then time a Tomcat process takes to send back the request to Apache
... and so on until the request arrives to the client.

What we have seen is that tomcat is spending a big amount of time (say 36%)
in step D.

and now the questions?

Is Tomcat prepared to handle a big number of concurrent requests?
How big can be that number?

Is there any way to configure Tomcat, in order to reduce the time we have
seen in step D?

Thanks,

________________________________________________________

  Vicente Martínez Martínez / vmartinez@es.wanadoo.com
________________________________________________________

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