4
Managing the Network Connection

This chapter provides information about specifying IP addresses and ports, and managing server interaction and network connection persistence. Topics include:

• Specifying Listener Ports and Addresses

• Managing Interaction between the Server and Network

• Managing Connection Persistence

  Note: Readers using this guide in PDF or hard copy formats will be unable to access third-party documentation, which Oracle provides in HTML format only. To access the third-party documentation referenced in this guide, use the HTML version of this guide and click on the hyperlinks.

Specifying Listener Ports and Addresses

When Oracle HTTP Server is started, by default it listens for requests on port 7777 (non-SSL) or 4443 (SSL). For non-SSL, if port 7777 is occupied, Oracle HTTP Server will listen on the next available port number between a range of 7777-7877. Thus, if port 7777 is busy, it would listen on port 7778 and so on. Similarly, for SSL, if port 4443 is occupied, it will listen on the next available port number between the range of 4443-4543. Thus, if 4443 is busy, it will listen on 4444 and so on.

A file named setupinfo.txt is automatically generated in ORACLE_HOME/Apache/Apache. It contains information about which port Oracle HTTP Server is listening on. This file is generated at install time, and is not updated thereafter. If you restart Oracle HTTP Server, the information in setupinfo.txt becomes inaccurate.

Users can specify the server to listen to more than one port, selected addresses, or a combination. The following directives specify listener ports and addresses. Note that BindAddress and Port directives can be used only once. Apache group recommends the use of the Listen directive instead.

• BindAddress

• Listen

• Port

BindAddress

This restricts the server to listen to a single IP address. If the argument to this directive is *, then it will listen to all IP addresses.

See Also: "BindAddress directive" in the Apache Server documentation

Port

If no Listen or BindAddress directives are present, then this directive specifies the port of the listener. If a Listen directive is present, the Port value becomes the default port value that will be used when Oracle HTTP Server builds URLs or other references to itself. Usually, the values of Port and Listen should match, unless Oracle HTTP Server is being fronted by a caching or proxy server. In this case, you may want to set Port to be the port that is being used by the front end server and Listen to the port that Oracle HTTP Server is actually listening to. By doing this, redirects or other URLs generated by Oracle HTTP Server will point to the front end server rather than directly to Oracle HTTP Server.

See Also: "Port directive" in the Apache Server documentation

Listen

This specifies an IP port that Oracle HTTP Server should listen on. Multiple Listen directives can be used to listen on multiple ports. If present, this value will override the value of Port. Accordingly, if you have a Port value of 7777 and a Listen value of 7778, then Oracle HTTP Server will only listen on one port, 7778.

See Also: "Listen directive" in the Apache Server documentation

Managing Interaction between the Server and Network

The following directives are used to specify how the server interacts with the network:

• ListenBackLog

• SendBufferSize

• TimeOut

ListenBackLog

This specifies the maximum length of the queue of pending connections. This is useful if the server is experiencing a TCP SYN overload, which causes numerous new connections that open up but don't complete the task.

See Also: "ListenBackLog directive" in the Apache Server documentation

SendBufferSize

This increases the TCP buffer size to the number of bytes specified, thereby improving performance.

See Also: "SendBufferSize directive" in the Apache Server documentation

TimeOut

This sets the maximum time, in seconds, that the server waits for the following:

• The total amount of time it takes to receive a GET request.

• The amount of time between receipt of TCP packets on a POST or PUT request.

• The amount of time between ACKs on transmissions of TCP packets in responses.

The default is set at 300 seconds.

See Also: "TimeOut directive" in the Apache Server documentation

Managing Connection Persistence

The following directives configure how the server handles persistent connections.

• KeepAlive

• KeepAliveTimeout

• MaxKeepAliveRequests

KeepAlive

This enables a connection to be open for a long time, which enables multiple requests to be sent over the same TCP connection. The default is set to "ON".

See Also: "KeepAlive directive" in the Apache Server documentation

KeepAliveTimeout

This sets the number of seconds the server will wait for a subsequent request before closing the connection. Once a request has been received, the timeout value specified by the TimeOut directive applies. The default is set at 15 seconds.

See Also: "KeepAliveTimeout directive" in the Apache Server documentation

MaxKeepAliveRequests

This limits the number of requests allowed per connection when KeepAlive is on. If it is set to "0", unlimited requests will be allowed. The default is set at 100.

See Also: "MaxKeepAliveRequests directive" in the Apache Server documentation