Connection Management

HTTP connection management controls how clients, servers, and proxies reuse transport connections.

HTTP/1.1 normally reuses connections. HTTP/2 multiplexes streams over one connection, while HTTP/3 maps HTTP over QUIC. Connection is hop-by-hop and must not be forwarded as an end-to-end field.

httpperformanceproxyhttp1http2http3

Reference (http)

Connection: keep-alive
Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=100

HTTP/1.1 normally reuses connections. HTTP/2 multiplexes streams over one connection, while HTTP/3 maps HTTP over QUIC. Connection is hop-by-hop and must not be forwarded as an end-to-end field.

Common mistakes

Forwarding hop-by-hop fields through a proxy or assuming one connection represents one user.

Sources

MDN HTTP Reference