Which is the faster reverse proxy software? NGINX vs. ARC2 Proxy Part 1

Introduction

ARC2 Proxy and NGINX are versatile software solutions that offer similar capabilities and can be used interchangeably in various scenarios. Both support features like serving cached responses, which are crucial for improving the performance and scalability of web applications. In this round of testing, we aim to evaluate their efficiency in serving a cached "Hello World!" response.

By conducting performance tests under identical conditions, we aim to highlight any differences in response times, resource utilization, and scalability between ARC2 Proxy and NGINX. This comparative analysis will assist developers and system administrators in making informed decisions when selecting the most suitable proxy server for their specific requirements.

Features to be tested in this round

Serve a cached "Hello World!" response

Setup

Tests will run on a consumer-grade computer with a Linux-based OS and with the following specifications:

Kernel Version: 6.11.3-200.fc40.x86_64 (64-bit)
Processors: 12 × Intel® Core™ i5-10400 CPU @ 2.90GHz
Memory: 23.3 GiB of RAM
Linux Distribution: Fedora Linux 40
KDE Plasma Version: 6.2.0
ARC2 Proxy Version: oxyredox-v2/2.1.29
NGINX Version: nginx/1.26.2

For benchmarking, K6 will be used with the following configuration:


import http from 'k6/http';
import { sleep } from 'k6';

export const options = {
    stages: [
        { duration: '5s', target: X },
        { duration: '30s', target: X },
    ],
    insecureSkipTLSVerify: true,
};

export default function () {
    http.get('http://localhost/');
    sleep(1);
}

At the start, there will be a 5-second ramp-up to X VUs so that we can guarantee resource allocation and smooth expansion.

The configuration of ARC2 Proxy:


listening_address = "0.0.0.0"
listening_port_http = 80
listening_port_https = 443
logging_level = "error"
add_caching = true
add_rate_limiting = false
add_logging = false
disable_default_body_limit = false
add_sql_injection_protection = false

[[proxy_rules]]
domain = "localhost"
max_age_seconds = 3600
paths = ["/"]
forward_ipv4 = "127.0.0.1"
forward_port_http = 81
rule_type = "Whitelist"
ignore_query_string = false
enable_logging = false
enable_sql_injection_protection = false

Note that in total ARC2 Proxy will run with 4 workers active (not present in this configurations file).

The configuration of NGINX:


worker_processes 100;

events {
    worker_connections 4096;
}

http {
    include       mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;
    proxy_cache_path /opt/nginx keys_zone=mycache:60m;
    sendfile        on;
    keepalive_timeout 65;

    server {
        listen       79;
        server_name  localhost;

        proxy_cache mycache;
        proxy_cache_valid any 60m;

        location / {
            proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:81;
        }
    }
}

A Rust Actix-web-based test server is running on port 81.

The results

For 100 VUS

NGINX