HTTP pipelining

Time diagaram of non-pipelined vs. pipelined connection.

HTTP pipelining is a technique in which multiple HTTP requests are sent on a single TCP connection without waiting for the corresponding responses.^[1]

The pipelining of requests results in a dramatic improvement^[2] in the loading times of HTML pages, especially over high latency connections such as satellite Internet connections. The speedup is less apparent on broadband connections, as the limitation of HTTP 1.1 still applies: the server must send its responses in the same order that the requests were received — so the entire connection remains first-in-first-out^[1] and HOL blocking can occur. The asynchronous operation of the upcoming HTTP/2 or SPDY could be a solution for this.^[3]

Non-idempotent requests, like those using POST, should not be pipelined.^[4] Sequences of GET and HEAD requests can always be pipelined. A sequence of other idempotent requests like PUT and DELETE can be pipelined or not depending on whether requests in the sequence depend on the effect of others.^[1]

HTTP pipelining requires both the client and the server to support it. HTTP/1.1 conforming servers are required to support pipelining. This does not mean that servers are required to pipeline responses, but that they are required not to fail if a client chooses to pipeline requests.^[5]

Implementation status

Pipelining was introduced in HTTP/1.1 and was not present in HTTP/1.0.^[6]

Implementation in web servers

Implementing pipelining in web servers is a relatively simple matter of making sure that network buffers are not discarded between requests. For that reason, most modern web servers handle pipelining without any problem.

Implementation in web browsers

Out of all the major browsers, only Opera based on Presto layout engine had a fully working implementation that was enabled by default. In all other browsers HTTP pipelining is disabled or not implemented.^[3]

• Internet Explorer 8 does not pipeline requests, due to concerns regarding buggy proxies and head-of-line blocking.^[7]
• Internet Explorer 11 does not support pipelining. ^[8]
• Mozilla browsers (such as Mozilla Firefox, SeaMonkey and Camino) support pipelining; however, it is disabled by default.^[9][10] Pipelining is disabled by default to avoid issues with misbehaving servers.^[11] When pipelining is enabled, Mozilla browsers use some heuristics, especially to turn pipelining off for older IIS servers.^[12]
• Konqueror 2.0 supports pipelining, but it's disabled by default.
• Google Chrome previously supported pipelining, but it has been disabled due to bugs and problems with poorly behaving servers.^[13]

Implementation in web proxies

Most HTTP proxies do not pipeline outgoing requests.^[14]

Some versions of the Squid web proxy will pipeline up to two outgoing requests. This functionality has been disabled by default and needs to be manually enabled for "bandwidth management and access logging reasons."^[15] Squid supports multiple requests from clients.

The Polipo proxy pipelines outgoing requests.^[16]

Other implementations

The libwww library made by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), supports pipelining since version 5.1 released at 18 February 1997.^[17]

Other application development libraries that support HTTP pipelining include:

• Perl modules providing client support for HTTP pipelining are HTTP::Async and the LWPng (libwww-perl New Generation) library.^[18]
• Apache Foundation project HttpComponents provides pipelining support in the HttpCore NIO extensions.
• The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 supports HTTP pipelining in the module System.Net.HttpWebRequest.^[19]
• Qt class QNetworkRequest, introduced in 4.4.^[20]

Some other applications currently exploiting pipelining are:

• IceBreak application server since BUILD389
• phttpget from FreeBSD (a minimalist pipelined HTTP client)^[21]
• libcurl has limited support for pipelining using the CURLMOPT_PIPELINING option.^[22]
• portsnap (a FreeBSD ports tree distribution system)
• Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) support pipelining.
• Subversion (SVN) has optional support for HTTP pipelining with the serf WebDAV access module (the default module, neon does not have pipelining support).^[23][24]
• Microsoft Message Queuing on Windows Server 2003 utilises pipelining on HTTP by default, and can be configured to use it on HTTPS.^[25]
• IBM CICS 3.1 supports HTTP pipelining within its client.^[26]

Multipart XHR is implementation of pipelining (without any browser or web server support) done purely in JavaScript in combination with server-side scripting.

Testing tools which support HTTP pipelining include:

• httperf^[27]

See also

• HTTP persistent connection
• WebSocket
• SPDY

References

External links

• RFC 7230 "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing". ietf.org. Retrieved 2014-07-24. 
• HTTP/1.1 Pipelining FAQ at mozilla.org
• "Network Performance Effects of HTTP/1.1, CSS1, and PNG" at w3.org
• "Optimizing Page Load Times" article
• phttpget
• serf C library