Here's what I was thinking of, under "Vert.x Memory Usage":
https://www.tikalk.com/posts/2018/04/30/vertx-memory-usage-w...Quote:
"But how does Netty do things so fast ? One of the reasons is that it is using native memory pool to store network buffers. If you did some file reading or network action with Vert.x you probably used io.vertx.core.buffer.Buffer class. This class is actually a wrapper around Netty io.netty.buffer.ByteBuf class. Why am I telling you all this ? Let assume that you have a service where clients are downloading 20Mbyte files. Netty will have to allocate at least 20Mbyte for every connected client."
Although this may be an issue with how Vert.x is using Netty. I have to dig into it more.