Hi, we are using httpd 2.2.3 reverse proxy to load balance the traffic between backend servers. It is working fine. However I have a question for HTTP 1.1 persistant connection when backend servers reply with HTTP error. In this case httpd reverse proxy is sending Connection:close to the client. In case that backend server replies with HTTP 200 OK, connection parameter is keep-alive.
Based on RFC2616 - http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-8.1.1 HTTP errors should not break persistent connection. - HTTP can evolve more gracefully, since errors can be reported without the penalty of closing the TCP connection. Clients using future versions of HTTP might optimistically try a new feature, but if communicating with an older server, retry with old semantics after an error is reported. Can you please advise if this is how httpd reverse proxy is supposed to work or I am missing some configuration? Nikolay ############################# #Flow with HTTP 500 error #client to Proxy POST /services/ProvProxy HTTP/1.1 Referer: http://10.10.10.10:18089/services/ProvProxy Content-Type: text/xml SOAPAction: User-Agent: Wireless Intelligent Network/1.0 (nc stream) Host: 10.10.10.10 Content-Length: 999 Connection: Keep-Alive Cache-Control: no-cache #Proxy to backend POST /services/ProvProxy HTTP/1.1 Host: 10.10.10.11:8280 Referer: http://10.10.10.10:18089/services/ProvProxy Content-Type: text/xml SOAPAction: User-Agent: Wireless Intelligent Network/1.0 (nc stream) Cache-Control: no-cache X-Forwarded-For: 10.10.10.10 X-Forwarded-Host: 10.10.10.10 X-Forwarded-Server: 10.10.10.10 Connection: Keep-Alive Content-Length: 427 HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error Content-Type: text/xml; charset=UTF-8 Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1 X-Powered-By: Servlet 2.4; JBoss-4.2.3.GA (build: SVNTag=JBoss_4_2_3_GA date=200807181439)/JBossWeb-2.0 Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2012 17:25:27 GMT Transfer-Encoding: chunked Connection: Keep-Alive ## # Proxy response with Connection: close. HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2012 17:25:26 GMT Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1 Content-Type: text/xml; charset=UTF-8 X-Powered-By: Servlet 2.4; JBoss-4.2.3.GA (build: SVNTag=JBoss_4_2_3_GA date=200807181439)/JBossWeb-2.0 Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked httpd config: NameVirtualHost 10.10.10.10:18089 <VirtualHost 10.10.10.10:18089> ServerName 10.10.10.10:18089 <Proxy balancer://wwwcluster4> BalancerMember http://10.10.10.10:8280 route=www7 BalancerMember http://10.10.10.11:8280 route=www8 </Proxy> ProxyPass /services/ balancer://wwwcluster4/services/ ProxyPassReverse /services/ balancer://wwwcluster4/services/ <Location /server-status> SetHandler server-status Order deny,allow Deny from all Allow from 127.0.0.1 10.10.10.0/24 </Location> </VirtualHost> <Location /balancer-manager> SetHandler balancer-manager Order deny,allow Deny from all Allow from 127.0.0.1 10.10.10.0/24 </Location>
