lighttpd 1.4.65 Released With WebSockets Over HTTP/2

[phoronix]

Phoronix: lighttpd 1.4.65 Released With WebSockets Over HTTP/2

For those making use of the lighttpd lightweight and speedy web server, a new release is now available of this BSD-licensed open-source software. Most notable with lighttpd 1.4.65 is support for WebSockets over HTTP/2...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=lighttpd-1.4.65

[uid313]

Not yet support for HTTP/3.

Good web server, I used to use this back in the days when I wrote PHP, but nowadays I more use Kestrel (ASP.NET Core) and Node.js (React or Vue with Vite).

[F.Ultra]

Would be interesting to see some benchmarks of lighttpd vs nginx and apache with more recent versions, most if not all other such comparisons are about 10 years old at this point and much have happened since then.

[JEBjames]

Michael

What is the correct "protocl" (or is that "protocol") for reporting typos?

[ccormier]

Would be interesting to see some benchmarks of lighttpd vs nginx and apache with more recent versions, most if not all other such comparisons are about 10 years old at this point and much have happened since then.

Most performance bottlenecks these days are going to be on your backend. Though, anecdotally, Apache still has the worst out-of-the-box performance, particularly with a large number of connections (something it's never been able to fully get away from), but I doubt there's a major difference between Nginx and Lighttpd.

I use Lighttpd mainly because it implements specifications much more quickly and rigorously than any other webserver. For instance, Nginx and Apache both handle range requests improperly (causing errors in Aria2) whereas Lighttpd has no issues. I think it's the only webserver besides Caddy to have full native TLS-ALPN-01 support. It also has much better documentation than the competition, and I enjoy its configuration syntax too. GStrauss has been the one-man-army carrying this project for years, simultaneously programming it while managing the forums, issue tracker, documentation, answering questions about it on external sites like StackOverflow, making edits to third-party wikis on Arch and the like, helping update the packaging for Debian, the list goes on.

He's obviously an incredibly talented developer and I'm shocked he hasn't burnt out. Lighttpd punches far above its weight, and I've found that it can handle an enormous amount of load on relatively crappy servers without breaking a sweat or ever timing out. Worth taking a look at.