how much concurrent http request can erlang handle

Question

I am developing a application for benchmarking purposes, for which I require to create large number of http connection in a short time, I created a program in java to test how much threads is java able to create, it turns out in my 2GB single core machine, the limit is variable between 5000 and 6000 with 1 GB of memory given to JVM after which it hits outofmemoryerror with heap limit reached.

It is suggested that erlang will be able to generate much more concurrent processes, I am willing to learn erlang if it is capable of solving the problem , can erlang be able to generate somewhere around 100000 processes which are essentially http requests waiting for responses, in a matter of few seconds without reaching any limit like memory error etc.,

Answer 1

According famous Richard Jones blog you can handle 100k connection almost out of the box. You have to increase process limit, see +P parameter and it needs little bit memory management trickery e.g. gc or hibernate. To achieve significantly more you have to do more hacking with C.