Static File Serving Benchmark (HTTP/1.1 + TLS) — Implementation Guide

Must load files from disk on every request. No in-memory caching, no memory-mapped files, no pre-loaded file buffers. Compression must use the framework's standard middleware or built-in static file handler - no handmade compression code. Serving pre-compressed .br/.gz variants from disk is allowed, but only through a documented framework API (e.g. ASP.NET MapStaticAssets, nginx gzip_static / brotli_static, Caddy precompressed). No custom file-suffix lookup logic. TLS must come from a standard stack (OpenSSL, BoringSSL, rustls, SChannel, JDK JSSE, etc.) - no TLS session-ticket shortcuts that skip real handshakes.

May cache files in memory at startup, use memory-mapped files, pre-rendered response headers, or any caching strategy. May serve pre-compressed files (.gz, .br) from disk via any mechanism. Free to use any compression approach and tuned TLS providers.

No specific rules.

The Static Files over TLS profile is the Static Files workload transported over HTTP/1.1 + TLS on a dedicated port. It measures how much of a framework's plaintext static-serving throughput survives encryption.

Connections: 1,024, 4,096, 6,800

How it works

The framework serves the same 20 files from /data/static/ as the plain static profile
The framework listens on port 8081 with HTTPS, serving HTTP/1.1 only (ALPN advertises http/1.1)
The load generator (wrk) requests the 20 files in a round-robin pattern using the same Lua rotation script as static (requests/static-rotate.lua), over https://
All requests include Accept-Encoding: br;q=1, gzip;q=0.8
CSS (5 files, 8–200 KB): reset.css, layout.css, theme.css, components.css, utilities.css
JavaScript (5 files, 12–300 KB): analytics.js, helpers.js, app.js, vendor.js, router.js
HTML (2 files, 55–120 KB): header.html, footer.html
Fonts (2 files, 18–22 KB): regular.woff2, bold.woff2
SVG (2 files, 15–70 KB): logo.svg, icon-sprite.svg
Images (3 files, 6–45 KB): hero.webp, thumb1.webp, thumb2.webp
JSON (1 file, 3 KB): manifest.json

Total payload: ~842 KB across 20 files (~743 KB compressible text + ~99 KB binary). Brotli-compressed total: ~219 KB.

Pre-compressed versions of all text files (.gz at level 9, .br at level 11) are available in the data/static/ directory alongside the originals.

Compression

Identical to the plain static profile: compression is optional, must come from standard middleware / documented pre-compressed-file APIs on production entries, and is unrestricted on tuned entries.

Port, ALPN, and certificates

Port: 8081 (distinct from 8080 plaintext and 8443 which is dedicated to HTTP/2 / HTTP/3 profiles), shared with the json-tls profile
ALPN: advertise http/1.1 only. HTTP/1.1-only clients (wrk) negotiate correctly and never upgrade to h2.
Certificates: the same PEM files used by json-tls / baseline-h2 / static-h2, mounted at /certs/server.crt and /certs/server.key. Frameworks typically read them via environment variables (TLS_CERT, TLS_KEY) or a hardcoded path, same pattern as the other TLS tests.

What it measures

Everything Static Files measures
TLS handshake cost amortized over keep-alive - connections are long-lived at 1,024–6,800 concurrent
Record framing overhead on large payloads - multi-hundred-KB responses span many TLS records, unlike the small JSON bodies of json-tls
Symmetric cipher throughput - AES-GCM / ChaCha20-Poly1305 on the hot path, dominated by bulk encryption of file bodies

Expected request/response

GET /static/reset.css HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8081
Accept-Encoding: br;q=1, gzip;q=0.8

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/css
Content-Encoding: br

(compressed file contents)

Or without compression:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/css

(file contents)

Parameters

Parameter	Value
Endpoint	20 URIs under `/static/*`
Transport	HTTP/1.1 over TLS
Port	8081
ALPN	`http/1.1`
Connections	1,024, 4,096, 6,800
Pipeline	1
Duration	5s
Runs	3 (best taken)
Load generator	wrk + `requests/static-rotate.lua`
Certificates	mounted at `/certs/server.crt` + `/certs/server.key`