[e2e] Number of persistent connections per HTTP server?

[Spencer Dawkins]

Hi, Jim,

Thanks for the information.

I think I may have misled you with one question - when I said

>
> Mozilla seems to be implementing features like HTTP request pipelining, so
> this didn't surprise us a lot - we're just curious what science is behind the
> distinction between "number of connections per server" and "number of
> connections per proxy".
>
> Any pointers?

I was actually asking about a distinction between number of client connections per server and number of client connections to a proxy, not about the number of connections that a proxy uses to another server or proxy. 

I was aware of the sentence "A proxy SHOULD use up to 2*N connections to another server or proxy, where N is the number of simultaneously active users" in RFC 2616, which seems to be the question you were answering. 

I was really asking about browser behavior that opens up to four TCP connections to a proxy, if the client is sending simultaneous requests to two or more origin servers.

The apparent theory is that the client would have opened up to four TCP connections if it wasn't using a proxy and was sending simultaneous requests to two or more origin servers directly, but I am guessing!

Thanks,

Spencer

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim.Gettys at hp.com [mailto:Jim.Gettys at hp.com]

>
> Mozilla seems to be implementing features like HTTP request pipelining, so
> this didn't surprise us a lot - we're just curious what science is behind the
> distinction between "number of connections per server" and "number of
> connections per proxy".
>
> Any pointers?

The working group archives.

There is a fairness issue: a proxy is usually acting on behalf of many
users.  So it should be able to get correspondingly more bandwidth out of
the network, in proportion to the number of users of the proxy.  So if
10 users are accessing a web site through a proxy, it ought to be allowed
to get 10 times the bandwidth of an individual.