FYI

Stefan Savage (savage@cs.washington.edu)
Fri, 17 Jul 1998 11:23:49 -0700

Taken from the e2e list. The interesting part is the claim that most
web sessions reuse the same four connections. Something perhaps to
check in the web traces being taken.

- Stefan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Warren [SMTP:pwarren@gte.com]
> Sent: Friday, July 17, 1998 7:27 AM
> To: stevea@shastanets.com; end2end-interest@ISI.EDU
> Subject: RE: RFC 1337: Time-wait assassination
>
> [Steve Alexander:]
> >Anyway, the whole issue will be moot if persistent HTTP takes off ;->
>
> Persistent HTTP actually took off some time ago ago. Both major
> browsers
> since version 3.0 each, as well as all major Web servers, support
> KeepAlive, Netscape's version of persisent connections that was
> introduces
> a few years ago. (The HTTP 1.1 version is somewhat different, but
> works
> substantially the same in keeping connections open for reuse.)
> Certainly,
> the traffic traces I capture show KeepAlive enabled for most
> connections.
> Netscape, for instance, opens up to four parallel TCP connections,
> then
> reuses the same four ports as they become freed up.
>
> So I believe that persistent connections are now probably the default
> HTTP
> behavior out there now (unless there are a lot of pre- v. 3 browsers
> still
> active).
>
> = Peter
>
>
>
> Peter G. Warren
> Performance Analysis Group
> Advanced Systems Laboratory
> GTE Laboratories
> 40 Sylvan Rd., Waltham, MA 02254
> (617) 466-4142
>