title: Is it realistic for a single server to handle 2000 HTTP requests per second?
body: <p>I am building a Java-based web service (using JSON as a data encoding) that will need to handle up-to 2,000 HTTP requests per second.  The processing required for each request is almost negligible (a HashMap.put() method call), parsing the JSON would probably be the dominant overhead.</p>
  
  <p>I am wondering whether a single High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large EC2 instance (68GB RAM, 8 cores, 64-bit) would be capable of handing as much as 2,000 HTTP requests per second?</p>
  
  <p>I realize that an exact answer will be difficult, I'm just wondering whether this is within the bounds of possibility, or whether I'm smoking crack.</p>
  
  <p>I'm currently using the <a href="http://www.simpleframework.org/" rel="noreferrer">SimpleWeb</a> web framework, although I've noticed that it doesn't seem to be maintained currently.  Can people recommend alternative embeddable HTTP servers that would be well suited to this kind of high-volume usage?</p>