Slow HTTP.jl requests when SSL is enabled

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#1

I am using HTTP.jl library to download large files over an encrypted connection (via AWSS3 to connect to an S3-enabled datastore). I have found out that the performance is greatly degraded when encrypted connection is used. Consider the following code (I use http-server Node.js package to serve a ~400MB file):

# HTTPS
@time HTTP.request("GET", "https://localhost:8080/download.gz" ; require_ssl_verification=false) |> (x -> ())
  4.922933 seconds (177.54 k allocations: 795.587 MiB, 1.06% gc time)

# HTTP
@time HTTP.request("GET", "http://localhost:8080/download.gz") |> (x -> ())
  0.765877 seconds (63.79 k allocations: 777.194 MiB, 0.61% gc time)

In comparison, if I perform the same requests via curl, I get 0.785s for the HTTPS request and 0.498s for the HTTP request.

Could you please suggest me how to deal with this performance issue? Thank you in advance!

2 Likes
#2

Hey @karelh, this does not just seem to be a HTTP.jl situation but rather a behavior of HTTPS in general. See this thread for more details: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/149274/http-vs-https-performance

It seems like the solutions that are mentioned have to do with the actual device in question which in this case is owned by Amazon so you don’t have any control over it.

#3

Also, Welcome to the Julia Discourse! :partying_face:

#4

Thank you for the reply! I am fully aware that HTTPS will be slower than plain unencrypted HTTP. My main concern regarding the example is that the HTTPS request via HTTP.jl is more than 6x slower than the same request executed using curl. It seems to be an issue with HTTPS since in the case of unencrypted connection, HTTP.jl was just ~1.5x slower than curl.

Thank you!