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<TITLE>What is Webstone 2.0</TITLE>
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<CENTER><H1 ALIGN="CENTER"><IMG SRC="webstone.gif" WIDTH="534" HEIGHT="174" SGI_FULLPATH="/disk6/WebStone-2.0/doc/webstone.gif"></H1>
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</CENTER><H1>Introducing WebStone 2.0</H1>
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<P>WebStone 2.0 is the second generation Webstone web server benchmark. It
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incorporates numerous bug fixes, modifications for compatibility with other
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platforms and adds the new functionality of benchmark proxy servers, cgi
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and NSAPI programs as well as introducing run rules which should make Webstone
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numbers significantly more meaningful for comparison.</P>
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<P>Webstone 2.0 provides facilities for benchmarking proxy servers. This is
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accomplished by putting in a value for the the PROXYSERVER entry in the
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conf/testbed file, and changing the filelist to include URL's that have
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the hostname for the actual web server.</P>
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<P>Dynamic content benchmarking is now explicitly supported in Webstone 2.0.
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The file README.DynamicWorkload has directions for testing of NSAPI. The
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included filelist.dynamic-{light,medium,heavy} serve as sample loads, with
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the filelist.dynamic-heavy being the load that should be reported for NSAPI
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performance. The cgi-send numbers should be quored for the filelist.cgi-heavy
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<P>A port of the WebStone 2.0 benchmark to Windows NT is also included in this
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release. This port is still in progress, so full functionality is not assured.
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Specifically only the benchmark code has been ported - the supporting scripts
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<P>As of Webstone 2.0, there are now run rules which must be adhered to for
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published Webstone numbers. These are fairly basic, but they provide important
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constraints on the benchmarking which make Webstone numbers more meaningful.</P>
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<P><B>Fileset: </B>Included in the Webstone distribution is filelist.standard, which was previously
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called filelist.sample. This filelist has a distribution of fileset sizes
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that matches the kind of distributions seen in live web sites. The largest
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file in the distribution is a 5 MB in length, which simulates the occasional
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MPEG or other animation file which is downloaded. This filelist should be
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used for all published Webstone numbers. Note that running WebStone 2.0
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with the sort of fileset given in WebStone 1.1 will not yield a comparable
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benchmark. In general, the WebStone 2.0 filelist will yield lower rates
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for connections/second, but higher rates for throughput - the two sets of
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numbers cannot be compared.</P>
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<P>When reporting NSAPI numbers, the filelist.dynamic-heavy filelist should
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be used. For CGI numbers, the filelist.cgi-heavy filelist should be used.</P>
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<P><B>Benchmark Run Configuration:</B> For a reported WebStone run, the runtime must be set at least 10 minutes.
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This provides adequate time for the server and client configuration to reach
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a steady state, and then provides a length of time long enough to cancel
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out the high variations seen in the first few minutes of the run. The number
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of clients should also vary from 20 to 100 in increments of 10 so that performance
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of the server under a wide variety of loads can be observed.</P>
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<P><B>Server Configuration:</B> The number of threads/processes is open to the discretion of the benchmarkers.
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However, whether server side logging is on must be explicitly reported.
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When logging is turned on, it must be in the common logfile format, and
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only IP addresses should be logged. Parsed HTML is recommended to be turned
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<P>Proxy Configuration: The configuration of how often the proxy server polls
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the actual server for refreshes of it's cache should be described, as well
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as any information</P>
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<P><B>Server Machine Configuration:</B> When reporting runs, it is necessary that the operating system, memory
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configuration and any special operating system modifications be reported,
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especially changes to the TCP/IP stack.</P>
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<P><B>Testbed configuration: </B>Reported runs must include information about the network topology being
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used, as well as the number and type of machines generating load.</P>
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<P>All reported runs must include the information summarized by webstone -results,
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excluding the timestamp. This includes: number of clients, connections per
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second, little's law number, latency, error level and throughput. Preferably
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in a table format.</P>