WAMP Apache Performance Woes [Fixed]

I’ve been running Apache on Windows for many years. This particular server is a relic from when I had mostly windows servers running. Nowadays, everything is cloud deployed with Linux. Still, its nice to have a “physical server” somewhere for quick prototype and static content hosting etc.

Lately I’ve been having a heck of a time with performance on the otherwise stable Win2008R2 + apache 2.4x stack.

I googled like mad and found lots of people talking about problems with their WAMP stack. My behavior was sort of unique in that after an apache restart, sometimes pages would load super fast for 10–20 seconds, then simple requests for static pages would go DOG slow. Like 20–30 seconds for a plain text page. Unreasonable.

After all the google foo, I found a solution. Credit goes to: http://www.apachelounge.com/viewtopic.php?t=4543&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=20 where I found the answer.

What was the answer? To add the following to your httpd.conf file:

AcceptFilter http none
TraceEnable off
EnableMMAP off
EnableSendfile Off
ThreadsPerChild 100

These few lines totally stabilized the server. I think the biggie was the AcceptFilter line, which I have never encountered in numerous apache-deep projects.

Anyway, wanted to pass along the nugget of wisdom I found and may it help some other poor person scratching their head…