Node.js doesn't serve more than 5 browser tabs

Question

I am using Apache, Mysql and Node.js to run a dynamic website which uses the long polling to update the content.

The main language is PHP but for updating the content I use Node.js

I run the Node.js server on port 9000

Apache is running on port 80

I am proxying any request arrives to Apache (to the Node.js site) to port 9000, below is the sites-available portion for the website (www.example.com):

<VirtualHost *:80>
    .
    .
    ProxyPass /node  http://localhost:9000/
    ProxyPassReverse /node  http://localhost:9000/
    .
    .
</VirtualHost>

The Node.js website: www.example.com/node/

I noticed that Node.js can't serve more than 5 browser tabs ! It stops updating after that. I read that Node.js can serve thousand of connections! How can I achieve the high performance?

The Node.js is communicating with Mysql direct every 2 seconds to check for updates.

Shall I use Nginx instead of Apache? Running both Webserver and Node.js on port 80 is healthy? What is the best way/services to use? Please advise and many thanks.

Answer 1

I noticed that Node.js can't serve more than 5 browser tabs! It stops updating after that. I read that Node.js can serve thousand of connections! How can I achieve the high performance?

You are getting confused. Web browsers have a maximum number of concurrent connections they will open to a given server ("origin").

You cannot accurately test concurrency with a single browser. Try load testing tools like wrk or apache bench .

To quickly prove this, open multiple distinct browsers (chrome, firefox, IE, etc), and a few tabs in each browser and that should illustrate what is going on here.

Answer 2

You would also need to check your Apache configuration to help figure out why so few connections can be made. Depending on your configuration (such as using the Apache mpm-prefork module), you might only have 5 slots that Apache could have as possible connections - particularly on a development system.

Apache, with Mod-PHP is frequently setup on Apache with a forking model. On Ubuntu, for example, you can check in the /etc/apache2/mods-enabled directory, and see what mpm*.conf and mpm*.load systems are being used.

Long term, NginX will usually be a better host, and certainly for large number of connections.