Re: Keep-Alive: timeout=%d, max=%d

["Roy T. Fielding" <fi...@kiwi.ics.uci.edu>]

>Why do we generate this header?  It's not defined by HTTP/1.1.  Where's
>the defining document? 

The notes I wrote that were the basis for all HTTP/1.0 implementations
of keep-alive.  You can find them somewhere on the http-wg list.  If used
properly, a client could tune its requests such that leaving a
connection hanging around would never be a server problem.  If not used,
then it is just semantic sugar (good for debugging).  It was dropped
from HTTP/1.1 because Jeff Mogul believed that a server should never
close its connection unless resource constraints were exceeded, and
thus telling the client in advance how many pipelined requests it
could make was no longer deemed "useful".

.....Roy