http://www.domain.com:9990/special.html
To access these settings, select the Connections item in the WebSTAR Admin application or the Settings > Misc. Settings links in the WebSTAR Browser Admin pages.
The HTTPS Port field only appears if you have SSL capacity: see Installing SSL .
This parameter specifies the maximum number of concurrent HTTP client connections to the WebSTAR web server. Many browsers request more than one element of a page, such as images, at the same time, to speed up their display. As soon as each file is entirely served, however, the browser disconnects itself. Therefore, the number of connections is not describing just the number of people trying to view your web site, but also the size and complexity of the web pages.
By default, Netscape browsers and Microsoft Internet Explorer are set to 4 simultaneous connections for each request.
If a browser tries to access your site, and there are already too many connections, WebSTAR will send back a message indicating that the browser should try again in a few seconds. Many browsers automatically try again without displaying an error, but eventually, they may timeout and display a message indicating that the web site is busy. The Admin Web Monitor window shows you a Connections monitor, which can help you track whether you have enough connections allocated. If people complain that your sites are always busy, you should probably increase the number of Max Connections, if you have enough bandwidth.
To further improve responsiveness, also increase the capacity of your network connection.
The faster your server machine and bandwidth, the more browsers you can serve without degrading performance. Conversely, the server can easily get swamped with connections if you have a limited bandwidth. Requests can come in faster than the server can transmit data to the clients
The basic rule of thumb is to watch the WebSTAR status window (the bar graphs) and adjust the Max Connections up or down, based on your server's load and performance under that load. Don't be afraid to restrict the number of connections if your server cannot handle the load (because either the computer or you have limited bandwidth). Doing so may actually help speed transfer rates, as the first requestors will finish and allow others to come in.
The default for Max Connections is 12 . The valid range for the Max Connections value is 4 to 500 (although you should leave some for other applications). After you change the number of connections, you must quit the WebSTAR application, update the memory allocation, and restart the server. The change will not take effect until you do so, although the monitor windows will reflect the new settings.
For every connection, increase the WebSTAR Memory Allocation by 100K: see Server Administration Responsibilities .
This parameter specifies the port number WebSTAR listens to for all incoming HTTP requests. The default port is the standard Web server port: 80 , but you can change this in special circumstances. Note that URLs will require the port number for ports other than 80, for example:
For more information, see Port Numbers .
All Virtual Hosts use the same port: you can't have them listen on separate ports
After you change a server's HTTP Port number, you must quit the WebSTAR application and restart it. The change will not take effect until you do so, even though the monitor windows may reflect the new port number.
The SSL portion of WebSTAR (which handles HTTPS requests) automatically listens on the standard HTTPS port number 443 .
If you have multiple WebSTAR servers active on one computer, you will have to set each on a different port. For more information, see Running Multiple Servers On The Same Machine .
This number determines the maximum amount of time (in seconds) that WebSTAR will wait before dropping an inactive connection. Timeouts can occur when a CGI application takes too long to execute or when a client doesn't respond to WebSTAR , implying that the connection has been dropped.
The default is 60 seconds, the minimum value is 15 seconds, and the maximum value is 120 seconds.
This setting controls the size, in bytes, of the data blocks that WebSTAR uses when reading binary files from disk (such as HTML, GIF and JPEG images). WebSTAR reads from the disk and writes to Open Transport in chunks known as buffers , which are then passed to the client via the network connection. Adjusting this value will have little impact on server speed, although it may improve disk file access efficiency.
You can reset the buffer size based on the size of data you are serving. For example, if you have a lot of images of around 6K, you may want to increase your buffer to 7168 bytes (7K).
Browsers on slow connections may have trouble transferring large buffers, so you should experiment to find the best setting for your client mix.
On fast network connections (T1 or greater), set the buffer size in multiples of the disk block size (512). On slower connections, set it in multiples of 1500 (the TCP/IP MTU size).
The default 3500 bytes, the minimum size is 256 bytes and the maximum is 10240 bytes.
This checkbox specifies whether WebSTAR uses DNS to look up the host name of the IP address of each browser or other client that sends it a request to the server. If this box is checked, the host name rather than the IP address appears in the status monitor windows and the log file.
This DNS data is cached, so it doesn't have to look up the IP address every time. However, whenever WebSTAR has to make a DNS request to get the host name, the additional network activity can slow the system. If there's a problem, such as an IP address that doesn't have a host name, or a slow DNS server, it can slow down your WebSTAR server considerably. Many of the log file analysis programs will do a DNS lookup for you, at the time of analysis, so you don't have to give up analysis by host name. Therefore, for best speed, you can uncheck this option.
See also: DNS and Log Formats .
If you use host names or domain names in your Allow/Deny entries, you must have "Use DNS" checked.
The default is Off (do not use DNS).
If this box is checked, all CGIs must be in the cgi-bin folder in the WebSTAR root folder. This makes your server safer: no one can upload a CGI to another folder and then run it.
See also: Developing CGIs .
Note that the CGIs must all be in the folder itself, not in a subfolder.
The default is Off (not to restrict CGIs).
The HTTP 1.1 standard allows a server to send several files to a browser during a single connection. This allows WebSTAR to serve an HTML file and several small images in one connection, instead of requiring the browser to set up a separate connection for each file being requested, and can be much faster. This is a feature of HTTP/1.1, and supports "HTTP 1.1 pipelining" which enables browser to send multiple GET requests in a single header.
Newer browsers automatically send a header element if they want to request a persistent connection for a page (or frame). When WebSTAR gets one of these elements in an HTTP request, it holds a connection open for that browser, to avoid the overhead of creating new connections for every transaction.
Persistent connections are also known as "KeepAlive" connections in the Browser Admin.
Persistent connections remain open for the Connection Duration. Therefore, they take up a connection even when the server is not actively sending a file. When you enable Persistent Connections, you'll notice that the status windows will report that the number of active connections is often increased by 25% to 50%. To avoid rejecting other requests with a server busy message, you should increase the number of connections allowed as well (see Max Connections ).
The Persistent Connections field sets the maximum number of connections that the WebSTAR Web server will hold open to a client. The range is from 1 to 10 connections. The default value is 4 connections, because most browsers can only open up to four connections per frame.
If you enable Persistent Connections, be sure to increase the Max Connections setting. For example, increase it from 12 to 24.
A setting of 0 turns off Persistent Connections, which will slow down the apparent speed of your server.
The Connection Duration field sets the number of seconds to keep idle client connections open. Idle connections are connections to browsers that are not currently requesting data. WebSTAR can retain those connections to avoid creating new connections if the client is likely to request data again. The range is from 1 to 60 seconds. A setting of 0 turns it off. If enabled, the recommended value is 15 seconds.
The setting is for sites that are running only CGIs which support persistent CGI connections. Do not check this box unless all CGIs running on the server support persistent connections.
This feature is unchecked by default.
WebSTAR allows you to specify how many of its processing cycles should be used for the Server Suite itself, and how many for any running CGIs or other applications on your server. This allows you to tune your server depending on whether WebSTAR is running alone or other applications need more time.
By default, performance is set closer to Better CGI than to Better Server.