Re: PERSIST: headers needed at all?

On Mon, 15 Apr 1996, Roy T. Fielding wrote:

> One problem is that there is a cost associated with holding a
> connection open on the server.  If the client knows that it will
> not be reusing the connection after the current request, then not
> asking for persistence means that the server can switch its process
> resources to a new connection immediately after sending the last
> response (as opposed to waiting for the close or timeout from the
> client). 
> 

Perhaps there could be a "Connection: non-persistant" header.  It makes
sense to have the most common situation be the default (requiring no
header) and add a header for the exceptional or at less common behavior.

John Franks 	Dept of Math. Northwestern University
		john@math.nwu.edu