"what does Keep-alive: 300" mean"

From: <skgupta@hss.hns.com> Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 17:24:34 +0530 To: http-wg@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com Message-ID: <65256A41.0040536A.00@sandesh.hss.hns.com> · This archive was generated by hypermail pre-2.1.9 : Wednesday, 24 September 2003 06:33:43 EDT

I was looking at the header of GET request sent by Mozilla.
I came across this header field "keep-alive: 300".
This field is not present in the GET request sent by
netscape 4.7 and IE 5.0 .

One more doubt, If this field is particular to Mozilla
browser, as my observation suggests, then How the server
is supposed to understand this field ?

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Regards
-Pawan