RE: "what does Keep-alive: 300" mean"

Miles Sabin (MSabin@interx.com)
Thu, 3 May 2001 16:19:06 +0100 

> > One more doubt, If this field is particular to Mozilla
> > browser, as my observation suggests, then How the server
> > is supposed to understand this field ?
>
> RFC-2068, section 19.7.1

No, it's not that.

The pre-HTTP/1.1 persistent connection mechanism uses,

  Connection: Keep-Alive

on the request side, and on the response side,

  Connection: Keep-Alive

and you might also see the Apache extension,

  Keep-Alive: max=???; timeout=???

Mozilla is the only client I've come across which uses a Keep-Alive:
header on the request side.

Presumably it's a hint to the server that the client will close the
connection after the specified number of seconds. I'm not entirely 
sure what the value of this hint is supposed to be tho'. It might be
useful if the default value were less than 2*MSL, in which case it 
would help a busy server to decide whether leave the client to close 
or take the time wait hit itself. But the default seems to be 300 
secs.

Cheers,


Miles

-- 
Miles Sabin                                     InterX
Internet Systems Architect                      27 Great West Road
+44 (0)20 8817 4030                             Middx, TW8 9AS, UK
msabin@interx.com                               http://www.interx.com/