Previously h2load used default flow control window as described in
HTTP/2 and SPDY specification. The window size is 64KiB, which is a
bit small, and cannot utilize full server performance when response
size is not too small. Basically, we do this kind of benchmarking
test to measure server's throughput, and optimal performance. Smaller
window certainly degrades performance even in local testing because
server is so fast that it has to wait for WINDOW_UPDATE from h2load.
To make default behaviour suitable for peak performance test, we
decided to disable flow control in h2load by setting large enough
window size.
Most users used h2load without -w or -W options, so they were
implicitly throttled by flow control and the result was affected by
that negatively. Now flow control is disabled by default, the result
may improve depending on the implementations.
The existing nghttp2_session_consume() affects both connection and
stream level flow control windows. The new functions only affects
either connection or stream. There is some interesting use cases.
For example, we may want to pause a stream by not sending
WINDOW_UPDATE, meanwhile we want to continue to process other streams.
In this case, we use nghttp2_session_consume_connection() to tell
library that only connection level window is recovered. The relevant
discussion: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=473259
To avoid buffer copy in nghttp2_data_source_read_callback, this commit
introduces NGHTTP2_DATA_FLAG_NO_COPY and nghttp2_send_data_callback.
By using NGHTTP2_DATA_FLAG_NO_COPY in
nghttp2_data_source_read_callback, application can avoid to copy
application data to given buffer. Instead, application has to
implement nghttp2_send_data_callback to send complete DATA frame by
itself. We see noticeable performance increase in nghttpd and
tiny-nghttpd using this new feature. On the other hand, nghttpx does
not show such difference, probably because buffer copy is not
bottleneck. Using nghttp2_send_data_callback adds complexity, so it
is recommended to measure the performance to see whether this extra
complexity worth it.
Previously API reference is gigantic one rst file and it is a bit hard
to use, especially when browsing similar functions. This commit
splits API reference into smaller fine grained files. The macros,
enums, types are now in its own file. Each API function has its own
file now. API reference doc is now index to above documentation
files. The apiref-header.rst is renamed as programmers-guide.rst and
becomes standalone document.
This API function with nonzero |val| parameter disables HTTP Messaging
validation in nghttp2 library, so that application can use nghttp2
library for non-HTTP use.
Tatsuhiro Tsujikawa
Viacheslav Biriukov