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 AB(1)                       Apache HTTP Server                        AB(1)
 ab                                                                       ab

                                 2013-10-16



 NAME
      ab - Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool


 SYNOPSIS
      ab [ -A auth-username:password ] [ -b windowsize ] [ -B local-address ]
      [ -c concurrency ] [ -C cookie-name=value ] [ -d ] [ -e csv-file ] [ -f
      protocol ] [ -g gnuplot-file ] [ -h ] [ -H custom-header ] [ -i ] [ -k
      ] [ -l ] [ -n requests ] [ -p POST-file ] [ -P proxy-auth-
      username:password ] [ -q ] [ -r ] [ -s timeout ] [ -S ] [ -t timelimit
      ] [ -T content-type ] [ -u PUT-file ] [ -v verbosity] [ -V ] [ -w ] [
      -x <table>-attributes ] [ -X proxy[:port] ] [ -y <tr>-attributes ] [ -z
      <td>-attributes ] [ -Z ciphersuite ] [http[s]://]hostname[:port]/path



 SUMMARY
      ab is a tool for benchmarking your Apache Hypertext Transfer Protocol
      (HTTP) server. It is designed to give you an impression of how your
      current Apache installation performs. This especially shows you how
      many requests per second your Apache installation is capable of
      serving.



 OPTIONS
      -A auth-username:password
           Supply BASIC Authentication credentials to the server. The
           username and password are separated by a single : and sent on the
           wire base64 encoded. The string is sent regardless of whether the
           server needs it (i.e., has sent an 401 authentication needed).

      -b windowsize
           Size of TCP send/receive buffer, in bytes.

      -B local-address
           Address to bind to when making outgoing connections.

      -c concurrency
           Number of multiple requests to perform at a time. Default is one
           request at a time.

      -C cookie-name=value
           Add a Cookie: line to the request. The argument is typically in
           the form of a name=value pair. This field is repeatable.

      -d   Do not display the "percentage served within XX [ms] table".
           (legacy support).




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 AB(1)                       Apache HTTP Server                        AB(1)
 ab                                                                       ab

                                 2013-10-16



      -e csv-file
           Write a Comma separated value (CSV) file which contains for each
           percentage (from 1% to 100%) the time (in milliseconds) it took
           to serve that percentage of the requests. This is usually more
           useful than the 'gnuplot' file; as the results are already
           'binned'.

      -f protocol
           Specify SSL/TLS protocol (SSL2, SSL3, TLS1, or ALL).

      -g gnuplot-file
           Write all measured values out as a 'gnuplot' or TSV (Tab separate
           values) file. This file can easily be imported into packages like
           Gnuplot, IDL, Mathematica, Igor or even Excel. The labels are on
           the first line of the file.

      -h   Display usage information.

      -H custom-header
           Append extra headers to the request. The argument is typically in
           the form of a valid header line, containing a colon-separated
           field-value pair (i.e., "Accept-Encoding: zip/zop;8bit").

      -i   Do HEAD requests instead of GET.

      -k   Enable the HTTP KeepAlive feature, i.e., perform multiple
           requests within one HTTP session. Default is no KeepAlive.

      -l   Do not report errors if the length of the responses is not
           constant. This can be usefull for dynamic pages.

      -n requests
           Number of requests to perform for the benchmarking session. The
           default is to just perform a single request which usually leads
           to non-representative benchmarking results.

      -p POST-file
           File containing data to POST. Remember to also set -T.

      -P proxy-auth-username:password
           Supply BASIC Authentication credentials to a proxy en-route. The
           username and password are separated by a single : and sent on the
           wire base64 encoded. The string is sent regardless of whether the
           proxy needs it (i.e., has sent an 407 proxy authentication
           needed).

      -q   When processing more than 150 requests, ab outputs a progress
           count on stderr every 10% or 100 requests or so. The -q flag will
           suppress these messages.



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 AB(1)                       Apache HTTP Server                        AB(1)
 ab                                                                       ab

                                 2013-10-16



      -r   Don't exit on socket receive errors.

      -s timeout
           Maximum number of seconds to wait before the socket times out.
           Default is 30 seconds.

      -S   Do not display the median and standard deviation values, nor
           display the warning/error messages when the average and median
           are more than one or two times the standard deviation apart. And
           default to the min/avg/max values. (legacy support).

      -t timelimit
           Maximum number of seconds to spend for benchmarking. This implies
           a -n 50000 internally. Use this to benchmark the server within a
           fixed total amount of time. Per default there is no timelimit.

      -T content-type
           Content-type header to use for POST/PUT data, eg. application/x-
           www-form-urlencoded. Default is text/plain.

      -u PUT-file
           File containing data to PUT. Remember to also set -T.

      -v verbosity
           Set verbosity level - 4 and above prints information on headers,
           3 and above prints response codes (404, 200, etc.), 2 and above
           prints warnings and info.

      -V   Display version number and exit.

      -w   Print out results in HTML tables. Default table is two columns
           wide, with a white background.

      -x <table>-attributes
           String to use as attributes for <table>. Attributes are inserted
           <table here >.

      -X proxy[:port]
           Use a proxy server for the requests.

      -y <tr>-attributes
           String to use as attributes for <tr>.

      -z <td>-attributes
           String to use as attributes for <td>.

      -Z ciphersuite
           Specify SSL/TLS cipher suite (See openssl ciphers)




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 AB(1)                       Apache HTTP Server                        AB(1)
 ab                                                                       ab

                                 2013-10-16



 OUTPUT
      The following list describes the values returned by ab:



      Server Software
           The value, if any, returned in the server HTTP header of the
           first successful response. This includes all characters in the
           header from beginning to the point a character with decimal value
           of 32 (most notably: a space or CR/LF) is detected.

      Server Hostname
           The DNS or IP address given on the command line

      Server Port
           The port to which ab is connecting. If no port is given on the
           command line, this will default to 80 for http and 443 for https.

      SSL/TLS Protocol
           The protocol parameters negotiated between the client and server.
           This will only be printed if SSL is used.

      Document Path
           The request URI parsed from the command line string.

      Document Length
           This is the size in bytes of the first successfully returned
           document. If the document length changes during testing, the
           response is considered an error.

      Concurrency Level
           The number of concurrent clients used during the test

      Time taken for tests
           This is the time taken from the moment the first socket
           connection is created to the moment the last response is received

      Complete requests
           The number of successful responses received

      Failed requests
           The number of requests that were considered a failure. If the
           number is greater than zero, another line will be printed showing
           the number of requests that failed due to connecting, reading,
           incorrect content length, or exceptions.

      Write errors
           The number of errors that failed during write (broken pipe).




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 AB(1)                       Apache HTTP Server                        AB(1)
 ab                                                                       ab

                                 2013-10-16



      Non-2xx responses
           The number of responses that were not in the 200 series of
           response codes. If all responses were 200, this field is not
           printed.

      Keep-Alive requests
           The number of connections that resulted in Keep-Alive requests

      Total body sent
           If configured to send data as part of the test, this is the total
           number of bytes sent during the tests. This field is omitted if
           the test did not include a body to send.

      Total transferred
           The total number of bytes received from the server. This number
           is essentially the number of bytes sent over the wire.

      HTML transferred
           The total number of document bytes received from the server. This
           number excludes bytes received in HTTP headers

      Requests per second
           This is the number of requests per second. This value is the
           result of dividing the number of requests by the total time taken

      Time per request
           The average time spent per request. The first value is calculated
           with the formula concurrency * timetaken * 1000 / done while the
           second value is calculated with the formula timetaken * 1000 /
           done

      Transfer rate
           The rate of transfer as calculated by the formula totalread /
           1024 / timetaken


 BUGS
      There are various statically declared buffers of fixed length.
      Combined with the lazy parsing of the command line arguments, the
      response headers from the server and other external inputs, this might
      bite you.


      It does not implement HTTP/1.x fully; only accepts some 'expected'
      forms of responses. The rather heavy use of strstr(3) shows up top in
      profile, which might indicate a performance problem; i.e., you would
      measure the ab performance rather than the server's.





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