Comparing ab and wrk Results for Go HTTP Server Testing

When conducting performance tests on a Go HTTP server, it is common to encounter significant differences between ab and wrk. Here are some factors contributing to these discrepancies:

Limitations of ab:

• ab is an older tool primarily used for HTTP/1.0, lacking keepalive support. Keepalives allow multiple requests to be pipelined over a single connection, boosting performance.
• ab's shortcomings in handling concurrency can result in highly variable results.

wrk's Advantages:

• wrk is a more modern tool that supports HTTP/2 and keepalives.
• It enables better control over the number of threads and connections, allowing for more accurate and reproducible testing.

Potential Issues:

• Local environment differences, such as resource limits and network configuration, can affect the test outcome.
• Differences in latency contribute to varying request rates.
• Benchmarking with simple responses (e.g., "Hello World") does not represent real-world scenarios involving database queries or other resource-intensive operations.

Practical Considerations:

• For more reliable benchmarks, consider using wrk with keepalives enabled.
• Interpret benchmark results with caution, as they can vary depending on the server load and the specific implementation.
• Optimize your server code for performance, but be mindful of production workloads and the scaling capabilities of your application.