John conducted benchmarks the other day and found that IIS/WinXP can be faster than Apache /Linux. His initial results show a huge difference, but later he found the difference was only 10%.
What difference would running a PHP accelerator make to the test? That may very well swing the results back in favour. In my own tests, adding a PHP accelerator makes an undeniable difference in speed tests. The acccelerator makers would have you believe the speed up is 10 times, but it’s at least 5-6 times.
How stable is IIS these days? I’ve heard it’s much better than it was, but is it more stable than Apache (1.3 or 2?) on Windows?
Maybe we’re missing an important point here though. Many managers want to use Microsoft in their shops. If they have IIS, this is one very good way of running PHP in that environment without being penalised by cgi performance. Bravo John for doing the tests, I’m certain your site will popup in a Google search when some MSCE is desperately trying to figure out what technology to use! We’re get them to use PHP first, and then when they’re comfortable with this open source lark, move their Win32 servers to Linux or some other Free Unix! *grin*