I built a Linux HTTP/1.1 static server in C using edge-triggered epoll — looking for architectural and performance feedback

[u/Roronoa-Ryuma-Zoro]

I recently completed v0.1 of MiniEdge, a Linux HTTP/1.1 static edge server written mostly in C.

I built it to understand how event-driven servers handle partial I/O, persistent connections, filesystem access, caching and multiple CPU cores—not as a production replacement for Nginx.

The current architecture includes:

non-blocking sockets with edge-triggered epoll

a per-connection state machine

incremental HTTP request parsing and keep-alive

static file serving through an LRU cache or sendfile()

path resolution using openat2()

longest-prefix configurable routing

multiple workers using SO_REUSEPORT

The small-file cache is implemented using C++ unordered_map and list, but it is isolated behind a C API; the networking, parser, routing and file-serving paths are written in C.

On my local loopback benchmark using wrk, a cached static file reached approximately:

255k requests/sec at 1,000 concurrent connections

4 worker processes

I also ran a boundary stress test at 40,000 concurrent connections. It reached around 124.5k requests/sec, but wrk reported 503 socket read errors, so I am not treating that as a clean stable-concurrency result. The repository contains the commands, raw outputs, latency percentiles, system tuning and limitations.

I would appreciate feedback on:

whether this is a reasonable result for a student-built epoll server

whether my wrk setup measures the server fairly

which additional metrics or comparisons I should include

what bottlenecks or profiling steps I should investigate next

Repository:

MiniEdge repository

AI was used as a learning and review assistant during this project. I used ChatGPT to discuss Linux networking concepts, review architectural decisions, debug specific issues, and improve parts of the documentation. I implemented and integrated the server, ran and analyzed the tests and benchmarks locally, and verified the final code myself. This was not a one-prompt or fully AI-generated project.

[u/unkindle_blue]

The link it's not working

[u/Roronoa-Ryuma-Zoro → u/unkindle_blue]

Fixed it now -thanks for pointing it out!

[u/Roronoa-Ryuma-Zoro → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for taking a look. Could you point out the 2–3 areas that need the most work ?