Apache Traffic Server 3.0.0 goes 64 bit

Apache Traffic Server, the high performance caching HTTP/1.1 proxy server, has been updated to version 3.0.0 and is now a 64 bit application. In benchmarks, Apache Traffic Server 3.0.0 has been able to handle 200,000 requests per second, which the developers say is a 277% improvement over version 2.0.

Yahoo! donated the server to Apache in November 2009 where it was developed in the Apache Incubator, eventually becoming a top level Apache project in May 2010. In use at Yahoo! it handles 400 terabytes of traffic a day as a forward and reverse proxy.

Other enhancements in version 3.0.0 of Apache Traffic Server include client side IPv6 support, WCCP (Web Cache Communication Protocol) support, functional clustering, and plug-in, statistics and management API improvements.

Traffic Server 3.0.0 can now be built on Mac OS X, Solaris and FreeBSD, in addition to the previously supported Linux. Other performance enhancements include a dedicated DNS thread, multiple accept threads and a new RAM cache algorithm.

The latter feature allows, in part, for that rate of 220,000 requests per second for cached small objects; uncacheable small objects can be proxied at a rate of 100,000 request per second. Developers say overall throughput has seen a two to three times improvement and response latency is five times better than version 2.0.

The Apache Traffic Server 3.0.0 release has seen over 1000 commits and 380 bug tickets resolved. It is available to download from the project's site. A full change log details all the modifications made during the ten development releases of the server; a version 2.x to 3.0.0 fixed bug list is also available.

(djwm)