# Nginx ssl slow **URL:** \ **Category:** NGINX\ **Created:** [July 12, 2011, 2:45am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-ssl-slow/209331 "2011-07-12T02:45:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dubstep](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@dubstep](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dubstep)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 2:45am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-ssl-slow/209331/1 "2011-07-12T02:45:53Z")
According to this article [http://matt.io/entry/uq](http://matt.io/entry/uq) nginx is really slow at SSL. Is this true and should I be using stud to handle SSL connections, or is nginx actually fast an it’s a configuration issue or a fluke version of nginx? Posted at Nginx Forum: > **[nginx ssl slow](https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,212229,212229#msg-212229)** > > According to this article http://matt.io/entry/uq nginx is really slow at SSL. Is this true and should I be using stud to handle SSL connections, or is nginx actually fast an it's a configuration issue or a fluke version of nginx? ---
**Author:** ![davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/4bbf92/32.png) [@davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidkazuhiro)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 6:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-ssl-slow/209331/2 "2011-07-12T06:16:18Z")
Hello! On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 08:45:07PM -0400, davidkazuhiro wrote: > According to this article [http://matt.io/entry/uq](http://matt.io/entry/uq) nginx is really slow > at SSL. Is this true and should I be using stud to handle SSL > connections, or is nginx actually fast an it’s a configuration issue or > a fluke version of nginx? Quick test suggests that it’s probably about new ECDHE ciphers being cool compared to DHE ones while nginx doesn’t support ECDHE out of the box (yet, there are patches floating around) even if compiled with OpenSSL 1.0. Using identical ciphers gives mostly identical results (no surprise). And obviously all these tests are far away from real life where ECDHE isn’t really used, while keepalive connections and session cache matters. Maxim D. ---
**Author:** ![davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/4bbf92/32.png) [@davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidkazuhiro)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 7:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-ssl-slow/209331/3 "2011-07-12T07:40:18Z")
Wait I’m confused… how do you know these tests were done with EDCHE ciphers? And if they were, how did he do them if nginx doesn’t support EDCHE? Posted at Nginx Forum: > **[Re: nginx ssl slow](https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,212229,212238#msg-212238)** > > According to this article http://matt.io/entry/uq nginx is really slow at SSL. Is this true and should I be using stud to handle SSL connections, or is nginx actually fast an it's a configuration issue or a fluke version of nginx? ---
**Author:** ![davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/4bbf92/32.png) [@davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidkazuhiro)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 8:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-ssl-slow/209331/4 "2011-07-12T08:24:10Z")
On Jul 12, 2011, at 4:45 , davidkazuhiro wrote: > According to this article [http://matt.io/entry/uq](http://matt.io/entry/uq) nginx is really slow > at SSL. Is this true and should I be using stud to handle SSL > connections, or is nginx actually fast an it’s a configuration issue or > a fluke version of nginx? I believe nginx was not configured to run 8 worker processes. It seems he ran only 2 worker processes. – Igor S. > **[Igor Sysoev](http://sysoev.ru/en/)** ---
**Author:** ![davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/4bbf92/32.png) [@davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidkazuhiro)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 8:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-ssl-slow/209331/5 "2011-07-12T08:29:07Z")
Until someone can chime in with better advise: Have a look at the comments on the HackerNews thread: > **[Nginx sucks at SSL, here's what to do instead](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2752136)** > > 170 points — > 62 comments — > seldo — > 7:31 PM - 11 Jul 2011 They propose some issues with the testing methodology, in particular the configuration option “ssl\_session\_cache” and keepalive\_\* may have not been adjusted from their default values. ---
**Author:** ![davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/4bbf92/32.png) [@davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidkazuhiro)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 9:59am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-ssl-slow/209331/6 "2011-07-12T09:59:30Z")
Igor I did SSL benchmarks with 10 worker processes on a very fast multicore machine with multiple ssl\_session\_cache configs to try and disprove this post. My results were also slow: On a 4 core Xeon E5410 using: ab -c 50 -n 5000 with 64 bit ubuntu 10.10 and kernel 2.6.35 I get: For a 43 byte transparent gif image on regular HTTP: Requests per second: 11703.19 [#/sec] (mean) Same file via HTTPS with various ssl\_session\_cache params set: ssl\_session\_cache shared:SSL:10m; Requests per second: 180.13 [#/sec] (mean) ssl\_session\_cache builtin:1000 shared:SSL:10m; Requests per second: 183.53 [#/sec] (mean) ssl\_session\_cache builtin:1000; Requests per second: 182.63 [#/sec] (mean) No ssl\_session\_cache: Requests per second: 184.67 [#/sec] (mean) I’m assuming the session cache has no effect since each ‘ab’ request is a new session. But I thought I’d try it anyway. 180 per second for a machine this fast compared to 11,703 per second on regular HTTP seems like a big difference. ‘ab’ was run on the local machine (it takes very little CPU) so there was zero network latency. Let me know if there’s anything I should try to speed it up. Here’s the config I used: worker\_processes 10; worker\_rlimit\_nofile 60000; error\_log logs/error.log; pid /var/run/nginx.pid; events { worker\_connections 10000; } http { client\_max\_body\_size 20m; client\_header\_timeout 3m; client\_body\_timeout 3m; send\_timeout 3m; server\_names\_hash\_bucket\_size 128; client\_header\_buffer\_size 1k; large\_client\_header\_buffers 4 4k; sendfile on; tcp\_nopush on; tcp\_nodelay on; server\_tokens off; gzip on; gzip\_min\_length 1100; gzip\_buffers 4 8k; gzip\_types text/plain text/css application/x-javascript application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript; keepalive\_timeout 10 5; proxy\_next\_upstream off; geo $country { default no; include mygeodir/nginxGeo.txt; } limit\_req\_zone $binary\_remote\_addr zone=slowSite:20m rate=10r/m; limit\_req\_zone $binary\_remote\_addr zone=fastSite:20m rate=500r/m; limit\_req\_zone $binary\_remote\_addr zone=zonea:20m rate=120r/m; limit\_req\_zone $binary\_remote\_addr zone=zoneb:20m rate=60r/m; include mime.types; #the rest is basic server sections } – Mark M.[removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) [http://feedjit.com/](http://feedjit.com/) ---
**Author:** ![davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/4bbf92/32.png) [@davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidkazuhiro)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 3:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-ssl-slow/209331/7 "2011-07-12T15:12:04Z")
Hello! On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 01:10:38PM +0400, Maxim D. wrote: > > And if they were, how did he do them if nginx doesn’t support > > $ http\_load -cipher CAMELLIA256-SHA -parallel 10 -seconds 10 stunnel > > $ http\_load -cipher CAMELLIA256-SHA -parallel 10 -seconds 10 nginx > > CAMELLIA256-SHA cipher used. On the other hand, using default > > (actually used cipher: DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA) > > Here you can see that ECDHE cipher is about 2x times faster > compared to DHE. I believe this is what actually was observed by > author of test you’ve referenced. Both are 3x times slower than > CAMELLIA256-SHA as shown above though. > > And again, disclaimer: all of the above tests ssl handshaking > speeds, not real https workload. Real workloads are expected > to be much different. Just for completenes, results with the ECDH patch[1] using the same ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA cipher as in stunnel case above: $ http\_load -parallel 10 -seconds 10 nginx 279 fetches, 10 max parallel, 11997 bytes, in 10.018 seconds 43 mean bytes/connection 27.8498 fetches/sec, 1197.54 bytes/sec msecs/connect: 1.63012 mean, 37.961 max, 0.272 min msecs/first-response: 206.536 mean, 604.134 max, 62.889 min HTTP response codes: code 200 – 279 (the above disclaimer still applies) [1] [ECDHE key exchange with TLSv1](http://nginx.org/pipermail/nginx-devel/2011-January/000645.html) Maxim D. ---
**Author:** ![davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/4bbf92/32.png) [@davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidkazuhiro)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 5:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-ssl-slow/209331/8 "2011-07-14T17:20:40Z")
Hello! On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 01:58:38AM -0600, Mark M. wrote: > For a 43 byte transparent gif image on regular HTTP: > > ssl\_session\_cache builtin:1000; > Requests per second: 182.63 [#/sec] (mean) > > No ssl\_session\_cache: > Requests per second: 184.67 [#/sec] (mean) > > I’m assuming the session cache has no effect since each ‘ab’ request > is a new session. But I thought I’d try it anyway. Yes, ab won’t reuse sessions. > 180 per second for a machine this fast compared to 11,703 per second > on regular HTTP seems like a big difference. ‘ab’ was run on the > local machine (it takes very little CPU) so there was zero network > latency. I’ve did some tests on 2 x X5355 (4 cores each, 8 cores total) server, it should be comparable to yours E5410. I’ve used empty\_gif to test as well. First of all, ab wasn’t even able to saturate _regular_ http while eating 100% cpu (i.e. the whole cpu core, it just can’t eat more as it’s single thread/single process). That is, it only shows something about 13k r/s, while with 5 ab processes nginx is actually able to handle 50k r/s over loopback. So about “ab takes very little CPU”: no it doesn’t, it’s awfully CPU bound. If you see low numbers in top - make sure top shows %CPU for a core, not for all cores in system, or you’ll see small number like 12.5% (100%/8) for a “whole core loaded, can’t eat more” case. Under linux it should be switchable by pressing ‘I’ (Irix mode vs. Solaris mode). > Let me know if there’s anything I should try to speed it up. The same as the above applies to https as well. While using 1024 bit RSA key and DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA cipher, with 8 ab processes from another host I see 1800 r/s while system being 100% busy. Other results include: 1024 bit key, DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 1800 r/s 2048 bit key, DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 1050 r/s 4096 bit key, DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 270 r/s With ECDHE ciphers (and patch already mentioned in this thread): 1024 bit key, ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 2740 r/s 2048 bit key, ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 1340 r/s 4096 bit key, ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 285 r/s This is with fairy trivial nginx config: ``` worker_processes 8; error_log /path/to/error_log; events { worker_connections 10240; } http { include mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; access_log /path/to/access_log; server { listen 8443; server_name localhost; ssl on; ssl_certificate cert.pem; ssl_certificate_key cert.key; location / { empty_gif; } } } ``` Obviously using other cipher suites will produce much different results. Just to compare, here are results from stunnel on the same machine: 1024 bit key, DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 1990 r/s 2048 bit key, DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 1220 r/s 4096 bit key, DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 280 r/s 1024 bit key, ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 2285 r/s 2048 bit key, ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 1223 r/s 4096 bit key, ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 285 r/s It looks a bit faster with DHE ciphers, and the reason is not using SSL\_OP\_SINGLE\_DH\_USE option by default. Setting “options SINGLE\_DH\_USE” in config results in the following DHE performance of stunnel: 1024 bit key, DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 1480 r/s 2048 bit key, DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 953 r/s 4096 bit key, DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA - 260 r/s Maxim D. ---
**Author:** ![davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/4bbf92/32.png) [@davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidkazuhiro)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 7:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-ssl-slow/209331/9 "2011-07-14T19:18:18Z")
Hello, On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 8:19 AM, Maxim D. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Hello! > > On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 01:58:38AM -0600, Mark M. wrote: > > > Igor I did SSL benchmarks with 10 worker processes on a very fast > > multicore machine with multiple ssl\_session\_cache configs to try and > > disprove this post. My results were also slow: Update from the author: [http://matt.io/technobabble/hivemind\_devops\_alert:\_nginx\_does\_not\_suck\_at\_ssl/ur](http://matt.io/technobabble/hivemind_devops_alert:_nginx_does_not_suck_at_ssl/ur) . Also of interest: [Unlike the above post, this fellow actually did some broad cipher testing (http:... | Hacker News](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2759781). ---
**Author:** ![davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/4bbf92/32.png) [@davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidkazuhiro)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 11:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-ssl-slow/209331/10 "2011-07-12T11:11:17Z")
Hello! On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 01:39:33AM -0400, davidkazuhiro wrote: > Wait I’m confused… how do you know these tests were done with EDCHE > ciphers? This is just a guess based on ciphers OpenSSL 1.0.0d prefers by default when working with nginx and stunell. > And if they were, how did he do them if nginx doesn’t support > EDCHE? Forcing cipher to be what equally supported by all programs tested. Good testing programs even have switches to specify that. 🙂 E.g. numbers are from virtual machine on my poor old P4 laptop, stunnel passing connections to nginx, using cipher as selected by my browser during real work: $ http\_load -cipher CAMELLIA256-SHA -parallel 10 -seconds 10 stunnel 540 fetches, 10 max parallel, 23220 bytes, in 10.008 seconds 43 mean bytes/connection 53.9568 fetches/sec, 2320.14 bytes/sec msecs/connect: 2.12899 mean, 24.401 max, 0.196 min msecs/first-response: 105.195 mean, 414.064 max, 23.386 min HTTP response codes: code 200 – 540 And here is nginx proxy\_pass’ing to itself, same cipher: $ http\_load -cipher CAMELLIA256-SHA -parallel 10 -seconds 10 nginx 766 fetches, 10 max parallel, 32938 bytes, in 10.0081 seconds 43 mean bytes/connection 76.538 fetches/sec, 3291.13 bytes/sec msecs/connect: 1.62532 mean, 22.692 max, 0.262 min msecs/first-response: 79.0284 mean, 239.204 max, 21.643 min HTTP response codes: code 200 – 766 And as a reference point, direct requests to non-ssl nginx (used as backend in both tests above): $ http\_load -parallel 10 -seconds 10 nossl 7536 fetches, 10 max parallel, 324048 bytes, in 10.0008 seconds 43 mean bytes/connection 753.542 fetches/sec, 32402.3 bytes/sec msecs/connect: 0.70163 mean, 30.059 max, 0.02 min msecs/first-response: 6.044 mean, 48.126 max, 0.281 min HTTP response codes: code 200 – 7536 So you may see nginx is a bit faster than stunnel when CAMELLIA256-SHA cipher used. On the other hand, using default ciphers would produce something like this: $ http\_load -parallel 10 -seconds 10 stunnel 243 fetches, 10 max parallel, 10449 bytes, in 10.0243 seconds 43 mean bytes/connection 24.2411 fetches/sec, 1042.37 bytes/sec msecs/connect: 2.03381 mean, 18.384 max, 0.188 min msecs/first-response: 239.767 mean, 628.098 max, 68.431 min HTTP response codes: code 200 – 243 (actually used cipher: ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA) $ http\_load -parallel 10 -seconds 10 nginx 144 fetches, 10 max parallel, 6192 bytes, in 10.0126 seconds 43 mean bytes/connection 14.3818 fetches/sec, 618.418 bytes/sec msecs/connect: 1.44656 mean, 12.673 max, 0.427 min msecs/first-response: 395.734 mean, 836.928 max, 124.105 min HTTP response codes: code 200 – 144 (actually used cipher: DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA) Here you can see that ECDHE cipher is about 2x times faster compared to DHE. I believe this is what actually was observed by author of test you’ve referenced. Both are 3x times slower than CAMELLIA256-SHA as shown above though. And again, disclaimer: all of the above tests ssl handshaking speeds, not real https workload. Real workloads are expected to be much different. Maxim D. ---
**Author:** ![davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/4bbf92/32.png) [@davidkazuhiro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidkazuhiro)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 7:57am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-ssl-slow/209331/11 "2011-07-15T07:57:46Z")
Thanks Adam for the post And thanks Maxim for the tip, your guess was correct. > Quick test suggests that it’s probably about new ECDHE ciphers being > cool compared to DHE ones while nginx doesn’t support ECDHE out of the > box (yet, there are patches floating around) even if compiled with > OpenSSL 1.0. Curiosity satisfied 🙂 Posted at Nginx Forum: [http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,212229,212415#msg-212415](http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,212229,212415#msg-212415)