OT: How to tell an HTTP client to limit parallel connections?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2013-11-08, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
>> What I really need is an HTTP header or meta-tag or something that I
>> can use to tell clients to limit themselves to a single connection.
>>
>> I haven't been able to find such a thing, but I'm hoping I've
>> overlooked something...
>
> That will only go so far. Suppose you tell web browsers "no more than
> 3 connections", then get hit by 30 nearly simultaneous, but separate
> clients.

In practice, that doesn't happen.  These servers are small, embedded
devices on internal networks.  If it does happen, then those clients
are all going to have to queue up and wait.

> Then you still wind up allowing up to 90 connections.

The web server is single threaded.  It only handles one connection at
a time, and I think the TCP socket only queues up a couple.  But that
doesn't stop browsers from trying to open 8-10 https connections at a
time (which then eventually get handled serially).

> There should be a parameter in your web server's config file to limit
> the number of simultaneously active threads or processes.

The server is single-threaded by design, so it is not capable of
handling more than one connection at a time.  The connections are
never actually in "parallel" except in the imagination of the browser
writers.

> It's been a long time for me, and you don't mention what brand of
> server you are running, but ISTR that Apache has/had such parameters.

FWIW, it's an old version of the GoAhead web server:

  http://embedthis.com/products/goahead/

> (Also, while this is off-topic for comp.lang.python, most people here
> are a helpful bunch, and recognizing that it is off-topic, will want
> to reply off-list. You don't give them that option with
> "invalid at invalid.invalid" as an email address.)

Yea, trying to hide e-mail addresses from automated spammers is
probably futile these days.  I'll have to dig into my slrn config
file.

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