First, writing a serious web server is not trivial in any language. It's a complex network server that requires intense attention to security (witness the number of IIS exploits). Not something to be taken lightly.
Absolutely - however, it would appear that a large number of those exploits are the result of IIS being too tightly-coupled with the Windows OS, and written in C/C++.

Were IIS written in managed C#, at least some of those problems may not have been introduced. Of course, you could argue that "fixing" such problems with .Net just gives you another problem :)
Second, I think you're underestimating the power and flexibility of Apache2. Let's look at some of your shopping list:

...lots of ++excellent++ points...
Having used Apache httpd since 1999 I have learned the ropes (enough to get my job done). However, I have always felt that Apache httpd configuration and deployment has always been something of an esoteric pile of "this is just the way it's done" dogma.

Why does one need to understand reverse proxies, ports, networking, system resource balancing, etc, etc, etc - just to set up 2 VirtualHosts running completely independent of one another, so that you could stop/start one and not the other? If I don't have to manage memory and garbage-collection within Perl, why do I have to be a network- and system-administration- wizard to set up something fairly trivial like that in Apache httpd? It's not as if running more than one VirtualHost on a single machine is an uncommon thing that only expert-level users would do.

Running a proxy in front of mod_perl has long been the recommended configuration.
And yet I have never seen an instance of Apache httpd installed (or set up by default) with mod_perl behind a proxy. Not since Redhat 5, not on Ubuntu 8.04, not on Fedora 9, CentOS or RHEL 5. Not with mod_perl 1.3x or with mod_perl 2.x. Not ever, not even once.

Apache httpd has been around for a long time, and will probably be around a another long time or two. If it works for you, then keep doing it. It doesn't work for me anymore, especially with Microsoft's recent donations (and the implied (or my inferred)) influence over what happens with all of the Apache Software Foundation's projects. For all I know the money could be Microsoft's way of saying "Sit. Stay. Good boy."

Back to my original question - Are Perl's networking libraries are capable of serving millions of requests per day, reliably and without leaking memory or causing other problems? Is it possible? Is it advisable?

Thanks for sharing your well-seasoned opinion!

In reply to Re^2: Time to write a "serious" http server in Perl? by jdrago_999
in thread Time to write a "serious" http server in Perl? by jdrago_999

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