Dependencies: -- libevent, http://www.monkey.org/~provos/libevent/ (libevent-dev) If using Linux, you need a kernel with epoll. Sure, libevent will work with normal select, but it sucks. epoll isn't in Linux 2.4 yet, but there's a backport at: http://www.xmailserver.org/linux-patches/nio-improve.html You want the epoll-lt patch (level-triggered). If you're using MacOS, you'll want libevent 1.1 or higher to deal with a kqueue bug. Also, be warned that the -k (mlockall) option to memcached might be dangerous when using a large cache. Just make sure the memcached machines don't swap. memcached does non-blocking network I/O, but not disk. (it should never go to disk, or you've lost the whole point of it) The memcached website is at: http://www.danga.com/memcached/