AB(1)				      ab				 AB(1)



NAME
       ab - Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool


SYNOPSIS
       ab [ -A auth-username:password ] [ -b windowsize ] [ -B local-address ]
       [ -c concurrency ] [ -C cookie-name=value ] [ -d ] [ -e csv-file ] [ -E
       client-certificate  file ] [ -f protocol ] [ -g gnuplot-file ] [ -h ] [
       -H custom-header ] [ -i ] [ -k ] [  -l  ]  [  -m	 HTTP-method  ]	 [  -n
       requests	 ] [ -p POST-file ] [ -P proxy-auth-username:password ] [ -q ]
       [ -r ] [ -s timeout ] [ -S ] [ -t timelimit ] [ -T content-type ] [  -u
       PUT-file ] [ -v verbosity] [ -V ] [ -w ] [ -x <table>-attributes ] [ -X
       proxy[:port] ] [ -y <tr>-attributes ]  [	 -z  <td>-attributes  ]	 [  -Z
       ciphersuite ] [http[s]://]hostname[:port]/path



SUMMARY
       ab  is  a tool for benchmarking your Apache Hypertext Transfer Protocol
       (HTTP) server. It is designed to give you an  impression	 of  how  your
       current	Apache	installation  performs.	 This especially shows you how
       many requests per second your Apache installation is capable  of	 serv-
       ing.



OPTIONS
       -A auth-username:password
	      Supply BASIC Authentication credentials to the server. The user-
	      name and password are separated by a single : and	 sent  on  the
	      wire  base64  encoded.  The string is sent regardless of whether
	      the server needs	it  (i.e.,  has	 sent  an  401	authentication
	      needed).

       -b windowsize
	      Size of TCP send/receive buffer, in bytes.

       -B local-address
	      Address to bind to when making outgoing connections.

       -c concurrency
	      Number of multiple requests to perform at a time. Default is one
	      request at a time.

       -C cookie-name=value
	      Add a Cookie: line to the request. The argument is typically  in
	      the form of a name=value pair. This field is repeatable.

       -d     Do  not  display	the  "percentage served within XX [ms] table".
	      (legacy support).

       -e csv-file
	      Write a Comma separated value (CSV) file which contains for each
	      percentage  (from 1% to 100%) the time (in milliseconds) it took
	      to serve that percentage of the requests. This is	 usually  more
	      useful  than  the	 'gnuplot'  file;  as  the results are already
	      'binned'.

       -E client-certificate-file
	      When connecting to an SSL website, use the provided client  cer-
	      tificate in PEM format to authenticate with the server. The file
	      is expected to  contain  the  client  certificate,  followed  by
	      intermediate  certificates,  followed by the private key. Avail-
	      able in 2.4.36 and later.

       -f protocol
	      Specify SSL/TLS protocol (SSL2, SSL3, TLS1, TLS1.1,  TLS1.2,  or
	      ALL). TLS1.1 and TLS1.2 support available in 2.4.4 and later.

       -g gnuplot-file
	      Write  all  measured values out as a 'gnuplot' or TSV (Tab sepa-
	      rate values) file. This file can easily be imported  into	 pack-
	      ages  like  Gnuplot,  IDL,  Mathematica, Igor or even Excel. The
	      labels are on the first line of the file.

       -h     Display usage information.

       -H custom-header
	      Append extra headers to the request. The argument	 is  typically
	      in the form of a valid header line, containing a colon-separated
	      field-value pair (i.e., "Accept-Encoding: zip/zop;8bit").

       -i     Do HEAD requests instead of GET.

       -k     Enable  the  HTTP	 KeepAlive  feature,  i.e.,  perform  multiple
	      requests within one HTTP session. Default is no KeepAlive.

       -l     Do  not report errors if the length of the responses is not con-
	      stant. This can be useful for dynamic pages. Available in	 2.4.7
	      and later.

       -m HTTP-method
	      Custom  HTTP  method  for	 the requests. Available in 2.4.10 and
	      later.

       -n requests
	      Number of requests to perform for the benchmarking session.  The
	      default  is to just perform a single request which usually leads
	      to non-representative benchmarking results.

       -p POST-file
	      File containing data to POST. Remember to also set -T.

       -P proxy-auth-username:password
	      Supply BASIC Authentication credentials to a proxy en-route. The
	      username	and  password  are separated by a single : and sent on
	      the wire base64  encoded.	 The  string  is  sent	regardless  of
	      whether  the proxy needs it (i.e., has sent an 407 proxy authen-
	      tication needed).

       -q     When processing more than 150 requests, ab  outputs  a  progress
	      count  on	 stderr	 every	10% or 100 requests or so. The -q flag
	      will suppress these messages.

       -r     Don't exit on socket receive errors.

       -s timeout
	      Maximum number of seconds to wait before the socket  times  out.
	      Default is 30 seconds. Available in 2.4.4 and later.

       -S     Do  not  display	the  median and standard deviation values, nor
	      display the warning/error messages when the average  and	median
	      are more than one or two times the standard deviation apart. And
	      default to the min/avg/max values. (legacy support).

       -t timelimit
	      Maximum number  of  seconds  to  spend  for  benchmarking.  This
	      implies  a -n 50000 internally. Use this to benchmark the server
	      within a fixed total amount of time. Per	default	 there	is  no
	      timelimit.

       -T content-type
	      Content-type header to use for POST/PUT data, eg. application/x-
	      www-form-urlencoded. Default is text/plain.

       -u PUT-file
	      File containing data to PUT. Remember to also set -T.

       -v verbosity
	      Set verbosity level - 4 and above prints information on headers,
	      3	 and above prints response codes (404, 200, etc.), 2 and above
	      prints warnings and info.

       -V     Display version number and exit.

       -w     Print out results in HTML tables. Default table is  two  columns
	      wide, with a white background.

       -x <table>-attributes
	      String to use as attributes for <table>. Attributes are inserted
	      <table here >.

       -X proxy[:port]
	      Use a proxy server for the requests.

       -y <tr>-attributes
	      String to use as attributes for <tr>.

       -z <td>-attributes
	      String to use as attributes for <td>.

       -Z ciphersuite
	      Specify SSL/TLS cipher suite (See openssl ciphers)


OUTPUT
       The following list describes the values returned by ab:



       Server Software
	      The value, if any, returned in the server	 HTTP  header  of  the
	      first  successful	 response. This includes all characters in the
	      header from beginning to the  point  a  character	 with  decimal
	      value of 32 (most notably: a space or CR/LF) is detected.

       Server Hostname
	      The DNS or IP address given on the command line

       Server Port
	      The  port	 to which ab is connecting. If no port is given on the
	      command line, this will default to  80  for  http	 and  443  for
	      https.

       SSL/TLS Protocol
	      The  protocol  parameters	 negotiated  between  the  client  and
	      server. This will only be printed if SSL is used.

       Document Path
	      The request URI parsed from the command line string.

       Document Length
	      This is the size in bytes of  the	 first	successfully  returned
	      document.	 If  the  document  length changes during testing, the
	      response is considered an error.

       Concurrency Level
	      The number of concurrent clients used during the test

       Time taken for tests
	      This is the time taken from the moment the first socket  connec-
	      tion is created to the moment the last response is received

       Complete requests
	      The number of successful responses received

       Failed requests
	      The  number  of  requests that were considered a failure. If the
	      number is greater than zero, another line will be printed	 show-
	      ing  the number of requests that failed due to connecting, read-
	      ing, incorrect content length, or exceptions.

       Write errors
	      The number of errors that failed during write (broken pipe).

       Non-2xx responses
	      The number of responses that were	 not  in  the  200  series  of
	      response	codes.	If  all	 responses were 200, this field is not
	      printed.

       Keep-Alive requests
	      The number of connections that resulted in Keep-Alive requests

       Total body sent
	      If configured to send data as part of  the  test,	 this  is  the
	      total number of bytes sent during the tests. This field is omit-
	      ted if the test did not include a body to send.

       Total transferred
	      The total number of bytes received from the server. This	number
	      is essentially the number of bytes sent over the wire.

       HTML transferred
	      The  total  number  of  document bytes received from the server.
	      This number excludes bytes received in HTTP headers

       Requests per second
	      This is the number of requests per second.  This	value  is  the
	      result  of  dividing  the	 number	 of requests by the total time
	      taken

       Time per request
	      The average time spent per request. The first  value  is	calcu-
	      lated  with  the	formula	 concurrency * timetaken * 1000 / done
	      while the second value is calculated with the formula  timetaken
	      * 1000 / done

       Transfer rate
	      The  rate	 of  transfer as calculated by the formula totalread /
	      1024 / timetaken


BUGS
       There are various statically declared buffers of fixed length. Combined
       with the lazy parsing of the command line arguments, the response head-
       ers from the server and other external inputs, this might bite you.


       It does not implement HTTP/1.x  fully;  only  accepts  some  'expected'
       forms  of  responses. The rather heavy use of strstr(3) shows up top in
       profile, which might indicate a performance problem;  i.e.,  you	 would
       measure the ab performance rather than the server's.




Apache HTTP Server		  2018-10-10				 AB(1)