Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 1294210
Set "KeepAlive On" in Apache httpd default configuration
Last modified: 2016-01-04 05:40:10 EST
Apache webservers from RHEL, CentOS etc. override the default apache configuration and use "KeepAlive Off" instead of "KeepAlive On". https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#keepalive This has a significant performance cost, see for instance http://www.webpagetest.org/result/151225_S7_D1V/4/details/#connectionView The problem may have been fixed in version 7 but should be backported to previous versions. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Long-standing configuration override according to multiple sources. Seen in most RHEL apache 2.0 and 2.2 webservers online; I couldn't find a website using 2.3 or 2.4. According to https://access.redhat.com/solutions/445713, RHEL 7 ships Apache 2.4 by default; https://www.linode.com/docs/websites/lamp/lamp-on-centos-7 and bug 1243887 imply that "KeepAlive On" is default (only) starting with 7, How reproducible: Always, with default configuration. Steps to Reproduce: Install apache, use default configuration, open any URL and see the webserver response. Actual results: Find "Connection: close" in it. Expected results: "KeepAlive On" by default in httpd configuration.
That's correct, KeepAlive is on by default from RHEL7. There are no plans to change the default KeepAlive configuration at this point in the RHEL5 or RHEL6 lifecycle.