# How much is the HTTPS overhead

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-much-is-the-https-overhead/185463>\
**Category:** NGINX\
**Created:** [March 20, 2010, 4:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-much-is-the-https-overhead/185463 "2010-03-20T16:57:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![fipa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/9e8a1a/32.png) [@fipa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fipa)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 4:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-much-is-the-https-overhead/185463/1 "2010-03-20T16:57:21Z")

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Hi,

I am running a RoR application with the signup/login page protected by  
https. It doesn’t look like it, but that’s super painful to maintain.

So I was considering to entirely protect my application so that the RoR  
doesn’t have to know about ssl and redirection to protected pages,  
however I’d like to know how much overhead is added.

Thanks for your answers

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**Author:** ![fipa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/9e8a1a/32.png) [@fipa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fipa)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 5:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-much-is-the-https-overhead/185463/2 "2010-03-20T17:16:51Z")

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> So I was considering to entirely protect my application  
> so that the RoR  
> doesn’t have to know about ssl and redirection to  
> protected pages,  
> however I’d like to know how much overhead is added.

good question but here is maybe not the right place for it as thats a  
very  
general topic and not nginx related.

id further recommend you to learn using google 😉 20 seconds of googling  
gives you a lot of information to that topic, for example here:  
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/548029/how-much-overhead-does-ssl-impose](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/548029/how-much-overhead-does-ssl-impose)

greetings

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![fipa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/9e8a1a/32.png) [@fipa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fipa)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 6:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-much-is-the-https-overhead/185463/3 "2010-03-20T18:22:24Z")

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It will use a bit more cpu. If you’re serving static content, you may  
notice the difference in cpu usage. If you’re using a heavy RoR app,  
then it shouldn’t increase total system utilization more than 10-20%.  
I was running a pretty heavy cgi proxy, and the difference between SSL  
and not SSL was just barely noticable in my cpu cacti graphs. So yes,  
a bit more cpu, but certainly it’s not going to increase your hosting  
costs dramatically.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![fipa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/9e8a1a/32.png) [@fipa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fipa)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 6:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-much-is-the-https-overhead/185463/4 "2010-03-20T18:48:45Z")

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If you use nginx on the front end, you can have some really long  
keepalives, which will reduce the number of connections set up and  
torn down. This will probably make the impact on performance  
negligible.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![fipa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/9e8a1a/32.png) [@fipa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fipa)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 6:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-much-is-the-https-overhead/185463/5 "2010-03-20T18:42:16Z")

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Thanks for your input.

It seems a major hit can happen if there are plenty small requests.

Hmm, I’ll have to find a way to simplify the https handling in my rails  
app then.