Why is fasthttp faster than net/http?

Question

A fasthttp based server is up to 10 times faster than net/http.

Which implementation details make fasthttp so much faster? Moreover, how does it manage incoming requests better than net/http?

Answer 1

The article "http implementation fasthttp in golang" from husobee mentions:

Well, this is a much better implementation for several reasons:

1. The worker pool model is a zero allocation model, as the workers are already initialized and are ready to serve, whereas in the stdlib implementation the go c.serve() has to allocate memory for the goroutine.
2. The worker pool model is easier to tune, as you can increase/decrease the buffer size of the number of work units you are able to accept, versus the fire and and forget model in the stdlib
3. The worker pool model allows for handlers to be more connected with the server through channel communications, if the server needs to shutdown for example, it would be able to more easily communicate with the workers than in the stdlib implementation
4. The handler function definition signature is better, as it takes in only a context which includes both the request and writer needed by the handler. this is HUGELY better than the standard library, as all you get from the stdlib is a request and response writer… The work in go1.7 to include context within the request is pretty much a hack to give people what they really want (context) without breaking anyone.

Overall it is just better to write a server with a worker pool model for serving requests, as opposed to just spawning a “thread” per request, with no way of throttling out of the box.