Question

Speed up Apache SSL Connections?

Asked by: Blueskimonkey

We have noticied that accessing our site over SSL is quite slow compared to normal http access, and have used http://tools.pingdom/ to measure the speed with https and without

With https the page takes around 13 seconds to load and without just over 2 seconds, I understand that SSL Encryption adds on extra delay and I have seen similar results with other big sites such as Microsoft, one interesting website is apple.com with https and without there is just a few seconds difference.

So I am starting to wonder if perhaps Apache is not optimized correctly for the SSL Connection

We have a AES-256 256 Bit wildcard certificate

our http-ssl.conf contains the following: 


Listen 443 

AddType application/x-x509-ca-cert .crt
AddType application/x-pkcs7-crl    .crl 
SSLPassPhraseDialog  builtin 
SSLSessionCache        "shmcb:C:/apacheweb/logs/ssl_scache(512000)"
SSLSessionCacheTimeout  300 
SSLMutex default 
<VirtualHost  mywebsite.mydomain:443> 
DocumentRoot "C:/apacheweb/htdocs"
ServerName mywebsite.mydomain.com:443
ServerAdmin me@example.com
ErrorLog "C:/apacheweb/logs/error.log"
TransferLog "C:/apacheweb/logs/access.log" 
SSLEngine on 
SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP:+eNULL 
SSLCertificateFile "C:/OpenSSL/bin/STAR_mydomain.crt"
SSLCertificateKeyFile "C:/OpenSSL/bin/myserver.key"
SSLCACertificateFile "C:/apacheweb/conf/TrustedSecureCertificateAuthority.crt" 
<FilesMatch "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php)$">
    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</FilesMatch>
<Directory "C:/apacheweb/cgi-bin">
    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Directory> 
BrowserMatch ".*MSIE.*" \
         nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
         downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0 
CustomLog "C:/apacheweb/logs/ssl_request.log" \
          "%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b" 
</VirtualHost>    

                                  
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Asked On
2009-11-04 at 06:21:42ID24870872
Tags

Apache

,

SSL

,

Slow

,

Optimize

Topics

Apache Web Server

,

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) & HTTPS

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: ParanormasticPosted on 2009-11-04 at 08:01:48ID: 25740656

SSL adds CPU time, as you pointed out.  There are really only two ways to do anything about it.

1) Reduce the number of pages that are using SSL - i.e. only use SSL when needed.  If you encrypt your entire site, you can redurce the overhead by not encrypting pages such as your homepage, about us / contact info, etc. and just reserve it for necessary pages like logon screens and pages that display user information.

2) Get an SSL accelerator.  By the sound of it, you could probably do okay with an entry level device which will typically be a PCI card.  These run a couple hundred bucks, but is much cheaper than a new or additional server, etc. and I think you would be very happy with the results.  If you contact the sales team for whichever product you decide, you can try asking about a pilot program or trial period to make sure it gives you the performance increase that you want so you can make sure you get a card with the appropriate amount of crypto operations per second.  These tend to be a little bit on the complicated side to set up, so give yourself time.  Make sure to verify that the product supports 256 bit SSL encryption...

 

by: ParanormasticPosted on 2009-11-04 at 08:11:06ID: 25740771

A couple side notes - I see you are using a wildcard - if you need to improve the performance for a number of servers, there are also rack mounted appliances that you can look at for the SSL accelerator so it can be used for multiple boxes, make sure to get the appropriate number of licenses as these tend to use a smartcard or secure transaction to the vendor to unlock the number of IP addresses connecting to it.  This would be installed on a backnet - for example use a small switch connected to the second nic of the server using a non-routed private network ip address if you go this route.

Also, you probably want to review what encryption algorithms you are using.  The SSLCipherSuite line determines what is allowed - you have probably too many options available for a secure page, which if you are using 256 bit encryption I would think would be a concern or else you would be using 128 bit encryption (which would be a 3rd way to reduce the cpu overhead, if that is acceptable).  For example, SSLv2 and eNULL should not be enabled since SSLv2 has been vulnerable for years and eNULL creates a clear text SSL session (normally just used for testing).

 

by: BlueskimonkeyPosted on 2009-11-05 at 04:52:18ID: 25748857

Thanks for the reply the accelerator does sound like a good option I will look into, I have also reconfigured the sslciphersuite line with your recommendations.

In terms of our SSL Conf does everything else look correct?

Thanks Aaron

 

by: ParanormasticPosted on 2009-11-06 at 07:20:00ID: 25759829

It looks pretty standard, which is fine if you restricted lower ciphers now.  There's really not a whole lot of things you can do for performance in this area since SSL is pretty much CPU usage.  The SSL accelerator offloads that CPU overhead onto a device that is designed specifically for handling crypto functions, which frees up your server's CPU for other things and speeds up the overall transaction.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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