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 ]
       [ -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 username 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'.

       -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 separate values) file. This file can easily be imported into packages 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 constant. 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  authentication
	      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 sup-
	      press 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 connection 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 showing the
	      number of requests that failed due to connecting, reading, 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  omitted	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 calculated 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
       headers 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						    2015-05-01								     AB(1)