Big list of http static server one-liners (gist.github.com)

Just notice the difference between python2 and python3 simple http server

  $ python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000
  $ python3 -m http.server 8000

Even the python3 is nicer to read, I really like that they package the server in a module. It's almost twice as slower in my machine.

Python2 Benchmark

  Requests per second:    606.03 [#/sec] (mean)
  Time per request:       8.250 [ms] (mean)
  Time per request:       1.650 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
  Transfer rate:          4412.05 [Kbytes/sec] received

And Python3 Benchmark

  Requests per second:    412.51 [#/sec] (mean)
  Time per request:       12.121 [ms] (mean)
  Time per request:       2.424 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
  Transfer rate:          3003.17 [Kbytes/sec] received

Both 1000 requests, concurrency level of 5. Listing a large directory with thousands of files.

I usually use python simple http server to share files and provide synchronization. One hopes that with a new python release it will get faster or at least smarter, both are the same implementation with no noticeable difference, just that python3 is slower.

Looks like Zawinski's Law needs to be revised: "Every program attempts to expand until it can serve HTML."