Tornado is a high performance non-blocking web server. As it's non-blocking it can handle 1000s of simultaneous connections (see C10k problem[1]) and is well made for long polling style applications (and in fact includes a chat application[2] in the demos).
Cool. I think what threw me a little was the term "Non-blocking".
After some basic research it seems that means communications between client and server happen asynchronously? Apache and other blocking web servers must have a start and end for every file or stream and has to create a new instance (or fork the process?) to serve another client. Tornado does not require a connection with a client to complete in order to connect with a new client.
After some basic research it seems that means communications between client and server happen asynchronously? Apache and other blocking web servers must have a start and end for every file or stream and has to create a new instance (or fork the process?) to serve another client. Tornado does not require a connection with a client to complete in order to connect with a new client.