Here is yet another comment of interest.
Carl-Uno
Carl-Uno Manros
Principal Engineer - Xerox Architecture Center - Xerox Corporation
701 S. Aviation Blvd., El Segundo, CA, M/S: ESAE-231
Phone +1-310-333 8273, Fax +1-310-333 5514
Email: manros at cp10.es.xerox.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Fielding, Roy [mailto:fielding at eBuilt.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2000 10:08 AM
To: 'Jeff.Hodges at kingsmountain.com'; http-wg at hplb.hpl.hp.com
Subject: RE: Of HTTP/1.1 persistent connections and TCP Keepalive timers
The decision on when to close is left to either side. A server will
close the connection based on its resource-consumption requirements
which may vary substantially based on the type of server and the
number of clients it is intended to serve. A client will close the
connection if it is connection-limited and needs to open many other
connections, or if it just believes in being network friendly.
Unfortunately, none of the major browsers are network friendly,
so they typically ignore the connection (not even recognizing FIN
as an event) until they later attempt to use it again. Most
general-purpose servers have a short activity time-out on
connections and will close the connection after that time-out
(typically under 10 seconds, though a high-activity server will
set this to one second or turn off persistent connections altogether).
Cheers,
Roy T. Fielding, Chief Scientist, eBuilt, Inc. (www.ebuilt.com)
Chairman, The Apache Software Foundation (www.apache.org)