> 1. On FreeBSD you can try to increase kern.ipc.somaxconn. I bet 8192
> would be enough for your test. This is socket backbuffer which can cache
> connections before server actually accepts them.

Ahhhh...on Ubuntu it's net.core.somaxconn, for which mine was only set to 128.

I didn't even have to go that high, just up to the number of simultaneous connections I was specifying in curl-loader, between 500-1000, to get 2500 reqs/second (which I'd say is about what my module should be able to handle given the time it takes to generate the response) with no time outs and all 200 OK responses.

Hopefully if I want more then that, I can set up multiple back-ends and reverse proxy them, which is why I was interested in nginx in the first place.

Still, I am curious as to what you meant by "your module is taking focus and not giving it back", also if anyone else has something to add feel free to chime in!

Thanks.