Apache MaxClients

[sirjune]

Hi,

Can someone kindly elaborate what MaxClient means?  i have set it up to 256.

 

Does it mean, my server can only have 256 users (unique) at max?

or

Does it mean 256 connections from non-unique users? like if a single user connects to my site and he gets the index.html file, with links to 10 jpgs, and 10 gif files .. -does it mean that user had 21 connections to my server?

 

thanks,

sir june

 

[corbin]

The MaxClients directive sets the limit on the number of simultaneous requests that will be served. Any connection attempts over the MaxClients  limit will normally be queued, up to a number based on the ListenBacklog  directive. Once a child process is freed at the end of a different request, the connection will then be serviced.

 

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mpm_common.html#maxclients

 

"Does it mean 256 connections from non-unique users? like if a single user connects to my site and he gets the index.html file, with links to 10 jpgs, and 10 gif files .. -does it mean that user had 21 connections to my server?"

 

 

Yes, and no.  If the user's client (as in web browser) does keep-alive requests, then it will open anywhere between 1 and 21 connections.

 

Keep-alive requests essentially keep the socket open so sequential requests don't need to reopen a new socket.

 

Read http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#keepalive