Tornado is an open source version of the scalable, non-blocking web server and tools that power FriendFeed. The FriendFeed application is written using a web framework that looks a bit like web.py or Google’s webapp, but with additional tools and optimizations to take advantage of the underlying non-blocking infrastructure.

The framework is distinct from most mainstream web server frameworks because it is non-blocking and reasonably fast. Because it is non-blocking and uses epoll, it can handle thousands of simultaneous standing connections, which means it is ideal for real-time web services.

They built the web server Tornado specifically to handle FriendFeed’s real-time features — every active user of FriendFeed maintains an open connection to the FriendFeed servers.

Requirements: PycURL and a JSON library like simplejson installed
Demo: http://www.tornadoweb.org/
License: Apache 2.0 License