Keep-Alive

Keep-Alive

The Keep-Alive general header allows the sender to hint about how the connection may be used to set a timeout and a maximum amount of requests.

Syntax

Keep-Alive: parameters

Directives

parameters

A comma-separated list of parameters, each consisting of an identifier and a value separated by the equal sign ('='). The following identifiers are possible:

• timeout: An integer that is the time in seconds that the host will allow an idle connection to remain open before it is closed. A connection is idle if no data is sent or received by a host. A host may keep an idle connection open for longer than timeout seconds, but the host should attempt to retain a connection for at least timeout seconds.
• max: An integer that is the maximum number of requests that can be sent on this connection before closing it. Unless 0, this value is ignored for non-pipelined connections as another request will be sent in the next response. An HTTP pipeline can use it to limit the pipelining.

Examples

A response containing a Keep-Alive header:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2016 15:23:13 GMT
Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=1000
Last-Modified: Mon, 25 Jul 2016 04:32:39 GMT
Server: Apache

(body)

Specifications

Browser compatibility

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	WebView Android	Chrome Android	Firefox for Android	Opera Android	Safari on IOS	Samsung Internet
Keep-Alive	Yes	12	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

See also

• Connection
• Connection management in HTTP/1.x
• Keep-Alive Header IETF Internet Draft