I have been evaluating OpenBSD as a platform, so if you are using
Linux or another OS you may see some differences.
However, on a 64MB/Cyrix 333 Mhz system I am using for testing, I get
nice numbers.
I used the ab program, which comes as part of the Apache web server.
While this is a simple, brain dead program, I have found it useful.
First, you HAVE to run PG with -F - it is 10 times or more slower.
On a brain dead one-table insert, I can handle about 100 - 120
inserts/second, sustained, into Postgres. I might be able to handle
more, but it saturates the 10Mbps hub I have at that number of
requests.
I have not yet tested selects, figuring that inserts were more likely
to create a load on the database.
Thus, on a PII or PIII machine @ 650Mhz you should be able to handle
much more, perhaps 200 or more queries per second, less of course if
you are doing fancier selects.
You are very fortunate to be able to dump images etc into Akamai -
this frees up connection threads, since images take longer to download
and thus eat up a thread for that much longer.
