Low value for maxHttpHeaderSize causes "server failed to respond" error

[Praveen Balaji <pb...@tibco.com>]

Hi all,

I am using Tomcat 5.5.12. When I set the maxHttpHeaderSize to a low
value and send a large header, my HTTPClient throws

"org.apache.commons.httpclient.NoHttpResponseException: The server
localhost failed to respond"

exception. Is this the expected behavior? Will Tomcat abort responding
if the header size is too large? Shouldn't there be some 5xx response?

Also, I notice that from Tomcat 4.0.x to Tomcat 5.5.12 the default value
of this parameter has gone down from 48K to 4K (and them up to 8K in
5.5.17). Can someone point me to any specific reason this was done?

Would greatly appreciate your inputs.

Thanks,
Praveen.