How to tell an HTTP client to limit parallel connections?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2013-11-08, Nick Cash <nick.cash at npcinternational.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 don't think such a thing exists...

Yea, that's pretty much the conclusion I had reached.

> but you may be able to solve this creatively:
>
> A) Set up a proxy server that multiplexes all of the connections into
>    a single one. A reverse proxy could even handle the SSL and alleviate
>    the load on the embedded server. Although it sounds like maybe this
>    isn't an option for you?

Indeed it isn't.  These "servers" are an embedded devices that are
installed on customer-owned networks where I can do nothing other than
what can be accopmplished by changes to the firmware on the server.

> B) Redesign the page it generates to need fewer requests (ideally,
>    only one): inline CSS/JS, data: url images, etc. It's not the
>    prettiest solution, but it could work.

That is something I might be able to do something about.  I could
probably add support to the server for some sort of server-side
include feature.  [or, I could pre-process the html files with
something like m4 before burning them into ROM.] That would take care
of the css and js nicely.  Inlining the images would take a little
more work, but should be possible as well.

I have vague memories of inline image data being poorly supported by
browswers, but that was probably many years ago...

Thanks for the suggestion!

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