.. program:: h2load h2load - HTTP/2 benchmarking tool - HOW-TO ========================================== :doc:`h2load.1` is benchmarking tool for HTTP/2 and HTTP/1.1. If built with spdylay (http://tatsuhiro-t.github.io/spdylay/) library, it also supports SPDY protocol. It supports SSL/TLS and clear text for all supported protocols. Compiling from source --------------------- h2load is compiled alongside nghttp2 and requires that the ``--enable-apps`` flag is passed to ``./configure`` and `required dependencies `_ are available during compilation. For details on compiling, see `nghttp2: Building from Git `_. Basic Usage ----------- In order to set benchmark settings, specify following 3 options. :option:`-n` The number of total requests. Default: 1 :option:`-c` The number of concurrent clients. Default: 1 :option:`-m` The max concurrent streams to issue per client. Default: 1 For SSL/TLS connection, the protocol will be negotiated via ALPN/NPN. You can set specific protocols in :option:`--npn-list` option. For cleartext connection, the default protocol is HTTP/2. To change the protocol in cleartext connection, use :option:`--no-tls-proto` option. For convenience, :option:`--h1` option forces HTTP/1.1 for both cleartext and SSL/TLS connections. Here is a command-line to perform benchmark to URI \https://localhost using total 100000 requests, 100 concurrent clients and 10 max concurrent streams: .. code-block:: text $ h2load -n100000 -c100 -m10 https://localhost The benchmarking result looks like this: .. code-block:: text finished in 7.08s, 141164.80 req/s, 555.33MB/s requests: 1000000 total, 1000000 started, 1000000 done, 1000000 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 errored, 0 timeout status codes: 1000000 2xx, 0 3xx, 0 4xx, 0 5xx traffic: 4125025824 bytes total, 11023424 bytes headers (space savings 93.07%), 4096000000 bytes data min max mean sd +/- sd time for request: 15.31ms 146.85ms 69.78ms 9.26ms 92.43% time for connect: 1.08ms 25.04ms 10.71ms 9.80ms 64.00% time to 1st byte: 25.36ms 184.96ms 79.11ms 53.97ms 78.00% req/s (client) : 1412.04 1447.84 1426.52 10.57 63.00% See the h2load manual page :ref:`h2load-1-output` section for the explanation of the above numbers. Flow Control ------------ HTTP/2 and SPDY/3 or later employ flow control and it may affect benchmarking results. By default, h2load uses large enough flow control window, which effectively disables flow control. To adjust receiver flow control window size, there are following options: :option:`-w` Sets the stream level initial window size to (2**)-1. For SPDY, 2** is used instead. :option:`-W` Sets the connection level initial window size to (2**)-1. For SPDY, if is strictly less than 16, this option is ignored. Otherwise 2** is used for SPDY. Multi-Threading --------------- Sometimes benchmarking client itself becomes a bottleneck. To remedy this situation, use :option:`-t` option to specify the number of native thread to use. :option:`-t` The number of native threads. Default: 1 Selecting protocol for clear text --------------------------------- By default, if \http:// URI is given, HTTP/2 protocol is used. To change the protocol to use for clear text, use :option:`-p` option. Multiple URIs ------------- If multiple URIs are specified, they are used in round robin manner. .. note:: Please note that h2load uses scheme, host and port in the first URI and ignores those parts in the rest of the URIs. UNIX domain socket ------------------ To request against UNIX domain socket, use :option:`--base-uri`, and specify ``unix:`` followed by the path to UNIX domain socket. For example, if UNIX domain socket is ``/tmp/nghttpx.sock``, use ``--base-uri=unix:/tmp/nghttpx.sock``. h2load uses scheme, host and port in the first URI in command-line or input file.