Test Method

AB (Apache Bench) was used to generate the load to each server.  AB was configured for a concurancy (simultaneous requests) level of 25, and for 10,000 pages.  Results were taken as the average requests per second for the test.  Each test scenario was executed between three and ten times, depending on the consistancy of the data.  For example, runs that differed by less than one percent were executed three times.  The median value was used as the actual number.  Between test scenarios, both the webserver (Apache), and MySQL was restarted to negate any cache effects. 

Test Versions

For these tests, I used 4 different installs of Joomla.  First is a fresh copy from Joomla 1.0 SVN (approximately 1.0.14).  Next, for historical reasons, are both Joomla 1.5 RC1 and Joomla 1.5 RC3.  Then, finally, is Joomla 1.5.1.  All installations were unmodified for these tests.  All installations were also installed with sample data for testing.