User manual

26 Chapter 2 Managing Web Technologies
Managing Connections
You can limit the period of time that users are connected to the server. In addition, you
can specify the number of connections to websites on the server at any one time.
Setting Simultaneous Connections for the Web Server
You can specify the number of simultaneous connections to your web server. When the
maximum number of connections is reached, new requests receive a message that the
server is busy.
Simultaneous connections are concurrent HTTP client connections. Browsers often
request several parts of a webpage at the same time, and each of those requests is a
connection. So a high number of simultaneous connections can be reached if the site
has pages with multiple elements and many users are trying to reach the server at
once.
To set the maximum number of connections to your web server:
1 In Server Admin, click Web for the server you want.
2 Click Settings in the button bar.
3 In the General pane, enter a number in the “Maximum simultaneous connections” field.
The range for maximum simultaneous connections is 1 to 2048. The default maximum
is 500, but you can set the number higher or lower, taking into consideration the
desired performance of your server.
4 Click Save.
Setting Persistent Connections for the Web Server
You can set up your web server to respond to multiple requests from a client computer
without closing the connection each time. Repeatedly opening and closing
connections isn’t very efficient and decreases performance.
Most browsers request a persistent connection from the server, and the server keeps
the connection open until the browser closes the connection. This means the browser
is using a connection even when no information is being transferred. You can allow
more persistent connections—and avoid sending a Server Busy message to other
users—by increasing the number of persistent connections allowed.
Important: Persistent connections are not compatible with the performance cache.