The new Apache Traffic Server 3.0.0 release is the first since 2.0 came out in 2010 when the project became a Top Level Apache Project. The Traffic Server has its roots in Yahoo, where it is used to handle the massive traffic volumes that Yahoo must serve.
In terms of how the Apache Traffic Server 3.0.0 release achieved the big performance gains over the previous release, Apache Traffic Server Vice President Leif Hedstrom told InternetNews.com there are two primary improvements that made the most difference. The first is fine tuning algorithms and code. The second major issue was isolating and eliminating bottlenecks that prevented the server from scaling to the large number of CPU cores that modern hardware has. Hedstrom noted that these improvements included eliminating unnecessary memory allocations, for example.
“The fundamental design and architecture of Traffic Server did not have to change to achieve these significant performance improvements,” Hedstrom said. “We still have plenty of work to do, but the improvements clearly show that our platform is solid and that we’ll be able to work with this architecture to scale with future hardware improvements.”
