NGINX is a high‑performance web server and reverse proxy originally
created by Igor Sysoev.
It was designed to solve the C10K problem (handling 10,000+ concurrent
connections efficiently) and was first released in 2004.
Today, NGINX is one of the most widely used web servers in the world,
powering high‑traffic websites and modern cloud‑native architectures.
High Performance & High Traffic
NGINX was built from the ground up to handle high traffic loads with
minimal resource consumption.
Unlike traditional web servers that rely on thread‑per‑connection or
process‑per‑connection models, NGINX uses a more efficient approach that
scales extremely well.
Key benefits: – Low memory footprint – Excellent CPU utilization –
Stable performance under heavy load
Event‑Driven & Asynchronous Architecture
NGINX uses an event‑driven, asynchronous architecture.
- A master process manages configuration and worker processes
- Worker processes handle all client connections
- Each worker uses an event loop to process multiple requests
concurrently
This design allows NGINX to manage thousands of connections without
creating a new thread or process for each request.
One Worker Can Handle Thousands of Connections
Thanks to its event‑driven model: – One worker process can handle
thousands of concurrent connections – Uses OS‑level mechanisms such as
epoll (Linux) and kqueue (BSD/macOS) – Very efficient for
high‑concurrency environments
This makes NGINX ideal for large‑scale systems, APIs, and microservices.
Non‑Blocking I/O & High Throughput
NGINX relies on non‑blocking I/O, meaning: – It never waits (blocks)
for slow network or disk operations – While waiting for one request, it
continues processing others
Advantages: – High throughput – Low latency – Excellent performance
during traffic spikes
Super Fast Static Content Delivery
NGINX is extremely fast at serving static content, such as: –
Images – CSS files – JavaScript files
It uses optimized system calls like sendfile, allowing files to be
sent directly from disk to the network without unnecessary memory
copying.
This results in: – Faster response times – Lower CPU usage – Better user
experience
Summary
NGINX is a powerful and reliable web server because it:
- Was created by Igor Sysoev for high‑traffic use cases
- Uses event‑driven and asynchronous architecture
- Allows one worker to handle thousands of connections
- Implements non‑blocking I/O for high throughput
- Delivers static content extremely fast
These features make NGINX a perfect choice for modern, scalable, and
high‑performance web infrastructures.
Reference: https://nginx.org/