Unexpected outcome of node.js vs ASP.NET Core performance test

Question

I am doing a quick stress test on two (kinda) hello world projects written in node.js and asp.net-core. Both of them are running in production mode and without a logger attached to them. The result is astonishing! ASP.NET core is outperforming node.js app even after doing some extra work whereas the node.js app is just rendering a view.

App 1: http://localhost:3000/nodejs node.js

Using: node.js, express and vash rendering engine.

The code in this endpoint is

router.get('/', function(req, res, next) {
  var vm = {
    title: 'Express',
    time: new Date()
  }
  res.render('index', vm);
});

As you can see, it does nothing apart from sending current date via the time variable to the view.

App 2: http://localhost:5000/aspnet-core asp.net core

Using: ASP.NET Core, default template targeting dnxcore50

However this app does something other than just rendering a page with a date on it. It generates 5 paragraphs of various random texts. This should theoretically make this little bit heavier than the nodejs app.

Here is the action method that render this page

[ResponseCache(Location = ResponseCacheLocation.None, NoStore = true)]
[Route("aspnet-core")]
public IActionResult Index()
{
    var sb = new StringBuilder(1024);
    GenerateParagraphs(5, sb);

    ViewData["Message"] = sb.ToString();
    return View();
}

Stress test result

Node.js App stress test result

Update: Following suggestion by Gorgi Kosev

Using npm install -g recluster-cli && NODE_ENV=production recluster-cli app.js 8

ASP.NET Core App stress test result

Can't believe my eyes! It can't be true that in this basic test asp.net core is way faster than nodejs. Off course this is not the only metric used to measure performance between these two web technologies, but I am wondering what am I doing wrong in the node.js side?.

Being a professional asp.net developer and wishing to adapt node.js in personal projects, this is kind of putting me off - as I'm a little paranoid about performance. I thought node.js is faster than asp.net core (in general - as seen in various other benchmarks) I just want to prove it to myself (to encourage myself in adapting node.js).

Please reply in comment if you want me to include more code snippets.

Update: Time distribution of .NET Core app

Server response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: no-store,no-cache
Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 07:46:56 GMT
Pragma: no-cache
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Server: Kestrel

Answer 1

As many others have alluded, the comparison lacks context.
At the time of its release, the async approach of node.js was revolutionary. Since then other languages and web frameworks have been adopting the approaches they took mainstream.

To understand what the difference meant, you need to simulate a blocking request that represents some IO workload, such as a database request. In a thread-per-request system, this will exhaust the threadpool and new requests will be put in to a queue waiting for an available thread.
With non-blocking-io frameworks this does not happen.

Consider this node.js server that waits 1 second before responding

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
  setTimeout(() => {
    res.statusCode = 200;
    res.end();
  }, 1000);
});

Now let's throw 100 concurrent conenctions at it, for 10s. So we expect about 1000 requests to complete.

$ wrk -t100 -c100 -d10s http://localhost:8000
Running 10s test @ http://localhost:8000
  100 threads and 100 connections
  Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
    Latency     1.01s    10.14ms   1.16s    99.57%
    Req/Sec     0.13      0.34     1.00     86.77%
  922 requests in 10.09s, 89.14KB read
Requests/sec:     91.34
Transfer/sec:      8.83KB

As you can see we get in the ballpark with 922 completed.

Now consider the following asp.net code, written as though async/await were not supported yet, therefore dating us back to the node.js launch era.

app.Run((context) =>
{
    Thread.Sleep(1000);
    context.Response.StatusCode = 200;
    return Task.CompletedTask;
});

$ wrk -t100 -c100 -d10s http://localhost:5000
Running 10s test @ http://localhost:5000
  100 threads and 100 connections
  Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
    Latency     1.08s    74.62ms   1.15s   100.00%
    Req/Sec     0.00      0.00     0.00    100.00%
  62 requests in 10.07s, 5.57KB read
  Socket errors: connect 0, read 0, write 0, timeout 54
Requests/sec:      6.16
Transfer/sec:     566.51B

62! Here we see the limit of the threadpool. By tuning it up we could get more concurrent requests happening, but at the cost of more server resources.

For these IO-bound workloads, the move to avoid blocking the processing threads was that dramatic.

Now let's bring it to today, where that influence has rippled through the industry and allow dotnet to take advantage of its improvements.

app.Run(async (context) =>
{
    await Task.Delay(1000);
    context.Response.StatusCode = 200;
});

$ wrk -t100 -c100 -d10s http://localhost:5000
Running 10s test @ http://localhost:5000
  100 threads and 100 connections
  Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
    Latency     1.01s    19.84ms   1.16s    98.26%
    Req/Sec     0.12      0.32     1.00     88.06%
  921 requests in 10.09s, 82.75KB read
Requests/sec:     91.28
Transfer/sec:      8.20KB

No surprises here, we now match node.js.

So what does all this mean?

Your impressions that node.js is the "fastest" come from an era we are no longer living in. Add to that it was never node/js/v8 that were "fast", it was that they broke the thread-per-request model. Everyone else has been catching up.

If your goal is the fastest possible processing of single requests, then look at the serious benchmarks instead of rolling your own. But if instead what you want is simply something that scales to modern standards, then go for whichever language you like and make sure you are not blocking those threads.

Disclaimer: All code written, and tests run, on an ageing MacBook Air during a sleepy Sunday morning. Feel free to grab the code and try it on Windows or tweak to your needs - https://github.com/csainty/nodejs-vs-aspnetcore

Answer 2

Node Frameworks like Express and Koa have a terrible overhead. "Raw" Node is significantly faster.

I haven't tried it, but there's a newer framework that gets very close to "Raw" Node performance: https://github.com/aerojs/aero

(see benchmark on that page)

update: Here are some figures: https://github.com/blitzprog/webserver-benchmarks

Node:
    31336.78
    31940.29
Aero:
    29922.20
    27738.14
Restify:
    19403.99
    19744.61
Express:
    19020.79
    18937.67
Koa:
    16182.02
    16631.97
Koala:
    5806.04
    6111.47
Hapi:
    497.56
    500.00

As you can see, the overheads in the most popular node.js frameworks are VERY significant!