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Below is an example HTTP 1.1 call with a single page requested :
GET /jq.js HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1
Accept: */*
I understand with HTTP Pipelining, multiple requests can be sent without breaking the connection.
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From w3c protocol details:
8.1.2.2 Pipelining
A client that supports persistent connections MAY "pipeline" its requests (i.e., send multiple requests without waiting for each response). A server MUST send its responses to those requests in the same order that the requests were received.
Clients which assume persistent connections and pipeline immediately after connection establishment SHOULD be prepared to retry their connection if the first pipelined attempt fails. If a client does such a retry, it MUST NOT pipeline before it knows the connection is persistent. Clients MUST also be prepared to resend their requests if the server closes the connection before sending all of the corresponding responses.
Clients SHOULD NOT pipeline requests using non-idempotent methods or non-idempotent sequences of methods (see section 9.1.2). Otherwise, a premature termination of the transport connection could lead to indeterminate results. A client wishing to send a non-idempotent request SHOULD wait to send that request until it has received the response status for the previous request.
So, first fact is that you should be in a KeepAlive status. So you should add Connection: keep-alive keyword in your request headers, but some webservers may still accept pipelining without this keep alive status. On the other hand, this could be rejected by the server, the server may or may not accept your connection in keepalive mode. So, at any time, being in keepalived or not, you may send 3 requests pipelined in one connection, and get only one response.
From this gist we can find a nice way to test it with telnet.
Asking for keepalive with Connection: keep-alive header:
(echo -en "GET /index.html HTTP/1.1\nHost: foo.com\nConnection: keep-alive\n\nGET /index.html HTTP/1.1\nHost: foo.com\n\n"; sleep 10) | telnet localhost 80
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.lan.
Escape character is '^]'.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 17:51:58 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.22 (Debian)
Last-Modified: Sun, 04 Mar 2012 15:00:29 GMT
ETag: "56176e-3e-4ba6c121c4761"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 62
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=100 <======= Keepalive!
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
<html>
<body>
<h1>test</h1>
</body>
</html>
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 17:51:58 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.22 (Debian)
Last-Modified: Sun, 04 Mar 2012 15:00:29 GMT
ETag: "56176e-3e-4ba6c121c4761"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 62
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
<html>
<body>
<h1>test</h1>
</body>
</html>
It works.
Without asking for Keepalive:
(echo -en "GET /index.html HTTP/1.1\nHost: foo.com\nConnection: keep-alive\n\nGET /index.html HTTP/1.1\nHost: foo.com\n\n"; sleep 10) | telnet localhost 80
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.lan.
Escape character is '^]'.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 17:49:37 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.22 (Debian)
Last-Modified: Sun, 04 Mar 2012 15:00:29 GMT
ETag: "56176e-3e-4ba6c121c4761"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 62
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
<html>
<body>
<h1>test</h1>
</body>
</html>
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 17:49:37 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.22 (Debian)
Last-Modified: Sun, 04 Mar 2012 15:00:29 GMT
ETag: "56176e-3e-4ba6c121c4761"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 62
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
<html>
<body>
<h1>test</h1>
</body>
</html>
Connection closed by foreign host.
Same result, I did not ask for it but it looks like a Keepalive answer (closing after 5s which is the value set in Apache). And a pipelined answer, I get my two pages.
Now if I prevent usage of any Keepalive connection in Apache by setting:
Keepalive Off
And restarting it:
(echo -en "GET /index.html HTTP/1.1\nHost: foo.com\nConnection: keep-alive\n\nGET /index.html HTTP/1.1\nHost: foo.com\n\n"; sleep 10) | telnet localhost 80
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.lan.
Escape character is '^]'.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 18:02:41 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.22 (Debian)
Last-Modified: Sun, 04 Mar 2012 15:00:29 GMT
ETag: "56176e-3e-4ba6c121c4761"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 62
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
<html>
<body>
<h1>test</h1>
</body>
</html>
Connection closed by foreign host.
Only one answer... So the server can reject my request for pipelining.
Now, for support on servers and browsers, I think your wikipedia source tells enough :-)
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