Coyote Point Systems Equalizer GX Series, Administration Manual

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Configuring Server Connections
HTTP Multiplexing
HTTP multiplexing is the re-use of established server connections for multiple clients connections.
The best way to understand this feature is to compare non-multiplexing behavior to multiplexing
behavior. When HTTP multiplexing is disabled (the default on Equalizer), each client connection
requires a new connection between Equalizer and a server.
What this means is that the servers behind Equalizer have to allocate a significant amount of
resources to establishing and tearing down TCP connections -- resources that could otherwise be
used by the applications running on the servers.
When HTTP multiplexing is enabled, an established server connection is left open for a period of
time to see if any new client connections are load balanced to the same server. If so, this
connection is used to forward the new client request to the server.
This allows Equalizer to service multiple client requests without all the overhead associated with
establishing a new server connection for every request - and results in better performance on the
client and server as well:
l
the client does not have to wait for Equalizer to establish a server connection before sending
the request to a server
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the server does not have to incur the overhead of establishing a new connection with Equal-
izer
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