What happens executing request thread when browser terminates connection?

[James Wiltshire <ja...@amacis.com>]

I'm using Tomcat 3.2.1 to run a servlet that can, depending on the
processing that needs to be performed, take a long time to send the response
back to the browser (it hits off back end systems to perform different tasks
depending on request params, some of which are quite lengthy). I have Tomcat
configured to use the PoolTCPConnector, so, as I understand, a single
instance of the servlet is instantiated, and then each subsequent request
gets executed in a new thread as allocated by a thread pool that Tomcat
maintains.
My question is - what happens to one of these executing threads if the user
clicks stop on the browser before the servlet has sent any response, or the
user gets impatient waiting, and clicks on the same (or another) link,
thereby cancelling the original request??

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

James Wiltshire