NYC LOCAL: Thursday 22 May 2008 UNIGROUP: Anthony Ferrara on Serving High Performance Web Sites

[secretary]

<blockquote
  what="official UNIGROUP announcement">

 Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 02:09:13 -0400 (EDT)
 From: Unigroup_of_NY <unilist@unigroup.org>
 Subject: Reminder: UNIGROUP Meeting 22-MAY-2008 (Thu): Serving High 
Performance Web Sites

 Notice: The May Unigroup meeting is THIS week (4th Thursday)...
         (Please RSVP so we can order the proper amount of food).

 ================================================================
 UNIGROUP OF NEW YORK - UNIX USERS GROUP - MAY 2008 ANNOUNCEMENTS
 ================================================================

    ----------------------------------
 1. UNIGROUP'S MAY 2008 MEETING NOTICE
    ----------------------------------

       When:  THURSDAY, May 22, 2008    (** SPECIAL 4th Thursday **)

      Where:  Alliance for Downtown NY Conference Facility
              Downtown Center
              104 Washington Street
              South West Corner of Wall Street Area
              Downtown, New York City
              ** Please RSVP (not mandatory) **

       Time:  6:15 PM - 6:25 PM  Registration
              6:25 PM - 6:45 PM  Ask the Wizard, Questions,
                                 Answers and Current Events
              6:45 PM - 7:00 PM  Unigroup Business and Announcements
              7:00 PM - 9:30 PM  Main Presentation

              -------------------------------------------------------
      Topic:  Serving High Performance Web Sites - Where Apache Fails
              -------------------------------------------------------

    Speaker:  Anthony Ferrara,
              Bigtrue INC.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    INTRODUCTION:
    -------------

    This month's presentation should be very interesting... a technical
    talk on High Performance Web Servers and alternatives.

    We are also planning our next BSD meeting, with another
    presentation from George Neville-Neil of the The FreeBSD Project
    Team...  tentatively something along the lines of: The FreeBSD
    Networking Stack (including recent work on supporting very
    high speed Ethernet standards, and security/packet filtering).

    We are also planning a Launch Meeting for the newly released
    OpenSolaris (Project Indiana) Distribution.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS:
    ---------------------

    To REGISTER for this event, please RSVP by using the Unigroup
    Registration Page:
          http://www.unigroup.org/unigroup-rsvp.html

    This will allow us to automate the registration process.
    (Registration will also add you to our mailing list.)
    Please avoid emailed RSVPs.

    Please continue to check the Unigroup web site and meeting page,
    for any last minute updates concerning this meeting.  If you
    registered for this meeting, please check your email for any last
    minute announcements as the meeting approaches.  Also make sure
    any anti-spam white-lists are updated to _ALLOW_ Unigroup traffic!
    If you block Unigroup Emails, your address will be dropped from our
    mailing list.

    Please RSVP as soon as possible.

    Note: RSVP is not mandatory for this location, but it does help
          us to properly plan the meeting (food, drinks, handouts,
          seating, etc.).

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    MAIN PRESENTATION
    -----------------

    Topic: Serving High Performance Web Sites - Where Apache Fails

    For nearly a decade, Apache has been seen as the only practical
    choice for serving static and dynamic content.  To this day, it
    powers the majority of all web sites.  However, Apache has several
    limitations and forthcomings (especially in the area of
    performance).  Nearly a decade of experience has many people
    believing that these limitations are inherent in serving content
    (An entire industry has even been created to deal with these
    limitations).  In reality, none of these limitations exist.
    We'll look into some of these shortcomings, and alternative
    technologies which exist that do not suffer from them.

    This talk will focus on technical and theoretical limitations
    inherent to the design of Apache.  There will be at least a few
    benchmark results shown and explained.  A big part of the talk
    will focus on why mod_php fails, and why FastCGI is superior.

    The following alternative web servers will be discussed:
      - FastCGI over mod_{php,perl,ruby,etc}
      - Lighttpd Web Server
      - Nginx  (if there is time to finish the benchmarks)
      - TUX webserver  (discussed briefly, including some
          system layouts possible with it)

    Web Resources:
    --------------

      Apache Web Server
        http://httpd.apache.org/

      Lighttpd Web Server
        http://www.lighttpd.net/

      Nginx
        http://nginx.net/

      Apache Modules: FastCGI over mod_{php,perl,ruby}
        http://modules.apache.org/search?id=73
        http://modules.apache.org/search?id=80

      TUX Web Server
        http://www.stllinux.org/meeting_notes/2001/0719/tux/index.html

      Joomla CMS
        http://joomla.org

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Speaker Biography:
    ------------------

    Anthony Ferrara is the team lead of the Joomla! Bug Squad, a
    member of the Joomla! Developer work group, owner and operator
    of JoomlaPerformance.com, and has released open source several
    caching programs to increase website speed.  He has quite varied
    background ranging from Mathematics to Emergency
    Medicine (and quite a bit in between).

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Company Biography:
    ------------------

    Anthony's company, Bigtrue INC, specializes in consulting and
    development focusing on performance (specializing in
    the Joomla CMS).

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Giveaways:
    ----------

    Addison-Wesley Professional/Prentice Hall PTR has been kind
    enough to provide us with some of their books, which we will
    continue to raffle off as giveaways at our meetings.

    O'Reilly has been kind enough to provide us with some of their
    books, which we will continue to raffle off as giveaways at our
    meetings.

    Unigroup would like to thank both companies for the support
    provided by their User Group programs.

    Note: The chances tend to be about 1 in 5, that any attendee of
    our meeting will walk away with a fairly valuable giveaway
    (ie. most books are valued between $30 and $60)!

    ** Thanks to our friends at Sun Microsystems, Unigroup also has
       some Solaris 10 DVDs to raffle off.

    As always, all of the books will be available for review at the
    start of the meeting.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Fee Schedule:
        Yearly Membership (includes all meetings):      $ 50.00
        Non-Member Single Meeting:                      $ 20.00
        Student Yearly Membership (with ID):            $ 25.00
        Non-Member Student Single Meeting (with ID):    $  5.00
        Payment Methods: Cash, Check, American Express.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Complimentary Food and Refreshments will be served.  This includes
    "wraps" such as turkey, roast beef, chicken, tuna and grilled
    vegetables as well as assorted salads (potato, tossed,
    pasta, etc), cookies, brownies, bottled water and assorted beverages.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Directions:

      Alliance for Downtown NY Conference Facility
      Downtown Center
      104 Washington Street
      Wall Street Area
      Downtown, New York City

    This building is located on the West side of the street, the
    second building north of Rector Street.  Cross Streets:
    Between Rector (South) and Carlisle (North) Streets.

    Our meeting location is in the Lower West Corner of Downtown,
    North of the Battery Tunnel, South of the Downtown Hotel,
    East of West Street, and West of Greenwich Street.  Walking West
    on Rector Street from Broadway, you pass Church, Greenwich then
    Washington Streets.

    There are multiple blocks of parking lots right there, between
    Washington and Greenwich Streets, starting at the Battery Tunnel
    and extending North for a number of blocks.

    Nearest mass transit stations, in order, are the '1/9' (Rector
    Street), 'R/W' (Rector Street) and the '4/5' (Wall Street).

    -----

    Please mark this meeting on your calendar and join us!
    Please tell your friends about Unigroup!

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    ----------------
 2. LOCAL NYC EVENTS
    ----------------

    a) IASA IT Architect NYC Regional Conference - May 22-23 2008
       ==========================================================

       The IT Architect Regional Conference is the largest event
       in NYC which addresses the needs of IT architects today.
       This event is sponsored by the NYC IASA Chapter.

       For information and paid registration visit:
         http://www.iasahome.org/web/itarc/nyc

       For information about the local IASA NYC Chapter visit:
         http://www.iasahome.org/web/newyork


    b) SIFMA (formerly SIA) Technology Management Conference 2008
       ==========================================================

       Date:  Tue, June 10  12:00pm -  6:00pm
              Wed, June 11,  9:00am -  6:00pm
              Thu, June 12,  9:00am - 12:00pm

       Where: Hilton New York
              1335 6th Avenue
              NYC

       For information and online registration visit:
         http://events.sifma.org/2008/107/event.aspx?id=526

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    -----------------
 3. UPCOMING MEETINGS
    -----------------

    We have a series of meetings in the works:

    - FreeBSD 7 Launch Meeting, Part 2
    - OpenSolaris Launch Meeting
    - Planning: IPsec and IPv6 and VPNs  (possibly 3 meetings)
    - Planning: Unix/Linux/BSD Distribution Round Table Discussions
    - Planning: Asterix / Bayonne / OpenPBX-CallWeaver / VoIP
    - Planning: NO SPAM!
    - Crypto / PKI / GPG-PGP
    - The latest on *BSD (NetBSD/OpenBSD)
    - Patching and Updating Unix/Linux/BSD (rpm. yum, yast, etc.)
    - Building Custom Kernels Unix/Linux/BSD
    - Are there too many Linux Distributions?
    - Unix/Linux/BSD Clusters and Clustered Databases
    - Linux Clustering Part 3: Beowulf version 2
    - Building a Firewall using FreeBSD and Linux
    - LAMP Part 2 - PHP
    - Field Trip to HP
    - Unix 35th Birthday Celebration (Sun has offered to host this!)
    - Samba
    - DNS
    - High Performance Internet Servers / Web Acceleration
    - Unix Office Tools: Word Processors, Spreadsheets, Accounting Packages.
    - GNU Development Environments
    - iSCSI, Serial ATA, and other new peripheral technologies
    - Java and/or JavaScript Programming

    ** Unigroup Needs Speakers!!
    Please let us know about any other meeting topics that you may be
    interested in.  Potential speakers on Unix/Linux/BSD related
    technology topics should please contact the Unigroup Board.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    --------------
 4. PRIOR MEETINGS
    --------------

    ** Formal Thank You's to our previous speakers will appear
       in an upcoming announcement.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    --------------------
 5. UNIGROUP INFORMATION
    --------------------

    Unigroup is one of the oldest and largest Unix User's Groups serving
    the Greater New York City Regional Area since the early 1980s.  Unigroup
    is a not-for-profit, vendor-neutral and member funded volunteer
    organization.  Unigroup holds regular and special event meetings
    throughout the year on technical topics relating to Unix and the Unix
    User Community.  Unigroup is/was also the Greater NYC Regional Area
    Affiliate of UniForum - an International Unix Users Group.

    Unigroup holds regular meetings planned for (at a minimum) the Third
    THURSDAY of Odd Months.  We generally try to hold Field Trip or
    Vendor Specific Meetings on the Even Months, although we do have the
    ability to hold monthly meetings at our new downtown meeting location.

    Planned regular meeting dates are (usually 3rd Thursdays):
      5/22/2008, 7/17/2008, 9/18/2008, 11/20/2008, 1/15/2009...
    Watch for our Special Event meetings at the various trade shows in NYC
    as well as "Field Trips" to the facilities of local hardware and
    software vendors.

    =========================================================================
    = For Unigroup Information, Events and Meeting Announcements be sure to =
    = visit our World Wide Web Home Page:                                   =
    =       http://www.unigroup.org                                         =
    =========================================================================

    For further information or to get on the Unigroup Electronic Mail Mailing
    List send an EMail message to:
         unilist (-a_t-) unigroup.org

    To contact the Board of Directors of Unigroup, send an EMail message to:
         uniboard (-a_t-) unigroup.org

    If you have recently attended a meeting and you are not receiving
    Email announcements, please send us an Email and we will make
    corrections to our lists.

    Please Email the Board with any suggestions, especially potential
    meeting topics and speakers.  Unigroup welcomes contributions and
    content suggestions for our newsletter.  Unigroup is a volunteer
    organization and we need your assistance!  Please let us know if you
    can help!


 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 -Rob Weiner
  Unigroup Executive Director
  unilist (-a_t-) unigroup.org
  http://www.unigroup.org
  
</blockquote>


Distributed poC TINC:

Jay Sulzberger <secretary@lxny.org>
Corresponding Secretary LXNY
LXNY is New York's Free Computing Organization.
http://www.lxny.org