AWStats logfile analyzer 3.2 Documentation

Benchmarks

AWStats update process must be ran frequently, so it's important to know what is AWStats speed to choose an optimum delay between each update process according to AWStats speed and the refresh rate you need to have.
AWStats speed depends on AWStats version and options/setup you use in configuration file.

This is benchmark results with AWStats version 3.2 and a common configuration:
HARDWARE: Athlon 1 GHz / 128Mb
SOFTWARE: Windows 2000 / ActivePerl 5.6
CONFIG OPTIONS: LogFormat=1, DNSLookup=0
AVERAGE SPEED: 3000 lines by seconds
Other times with other configs are shown in the lower in this page...

This is other important information to know:
- A log file size is about 150 (NCSA common/CLF log files) to 300 times (NCSA extended/XLF/ELF log files) its number of lines,
- A 30Mb file = 100,000 lines = 20,000 pages (with 5 hits/page) = 2,500 visits (with 8 pages/visits) => 75 seconds (Athlon 1GHz)
- History files resuming the log analyze is about 1/120 of source log file(s).

Don't forget that benchmarks of log analyzers are made without reverse DNS lookup because this depends on your system, networks and Internet and not on the log analyzer you use. And the reverse DNS lookup can take 95% of the time of a log analysis !
So, have a look at the following chart to:
- Get more real ideas on benchmarks results
- Get more information and advice on a good setup for your site.

This is examples of frequency/parameters you should use to have a good use of AWStats:

Your Web site size	Recommanded values for parameters		Recommanded update frequency (Rotate log delay)	Memory required***	Duration****
	DNSLookup*	UniqueDetect** (Future feature)
0 - 1,000 visits/month	1	1	Once a week Log files are 0-3 Mb 10000 lines to process	<4 Mb	<2mn
	0	1	Once a month Log files are 0-12 Mb 40000 lines to process	<4 Mb	<20s. (3000 lines/seconds)
1,000 - 10,000 visits/month	1	1	Every 12 hours Log files are 1-2 Mb 660-6600 lines	4-8 Mb	1-2mn
	0	1	Once a week Log files are 3-30 Mb 10000-100000 lines	4-8 Mb	5-50s (3000 lines/seconds)
10,000 - 50,000 visits/month	1	1	Every 4 hours Log files are 1-4 Mb 2200-11000 lines	8-16 Mb	1-4mn
	0	1	Once a day Log Files are 4-20 Mb 13000-65000 lines	8-16 Mb	10-40s (3000 lines/seconds)
50,000 - 250,000 visits/month	1	1	Every hour Log Files are 1-4 Mb 2700-14000 lines	16-32 Mb	2-4mn
	0	1	Every 6 hours Log Files are 5-25 Mb 17000-80000 lines	16-32 Mb	10-80s (3000 lines/seconds)
250,000 - 1,000,000 visits/month	0	1 or 0	Every hour Log Files are 4-16 Mb 14000-56000 lines	32-56 Mb	10-60s
1,000,000 - 5,000,000 visits/month	0	0	AWStats is not a good choice for such web sites
+5,000,000 visits/month	0	0	AWStats is not a good choice for such web sites

* You should set DNSLookup parameter to 0 if
      - reverse DNS lookup is already done in your log file
      - or if you don't need the "domain/countries" report
      - or if your web site has more than 250,000 visits a month.
** UniqueDetect must be disabled on very large web sites (more than 1,000,000 visits a month). Note: This parameter is not yet available !
*** Free memory required for update process (in Mb).
**** Duration is with Athlon 1GHz/128Mb and LogFormat=1.

This is a summary of main ways to speed up AWStats:
- You can disable DNSLookup in AWStats (set DNSLookup=0) but this requires that hosts addresses in your log file are already resolved (need to setup your web server to do so). Speed can be increased up by 2 to 50 times !
- If you use Apache, set PurgeLogFile to 1 (By default, to avoid bad surprise, PurgeLogFile is 0 in configure file, but you can set it to 1 to ask AWStats to purge log file after processing it, this increase speed for next run).
- Launch AWStats more often (from crontab or a scheduler). The more often you launch AWStats, the less AWStats has new lines in log to process.
- Use last AWStats version

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