webpagetest.org gives a big red *F *to web sites that do* *not have KeepAlive enabled. Yet, at least in the CentOS installation of Apache, it is off by default. Why is that? What are the reasons that KeepAlive should be off?
Although it's trivial to turn it on in httpd.conf, many web sites do not do it. We are debating turning it on by default in mod_pagespeed. This seems counterintuitive (and maybe beyond the moral boundaries of our module) but lots of sites on the internet appear to install mod_pagespeed but not bother to turn KeepAlive on. So we could either (a) engage in a campaign to get site owners to understand what KeepAlive is or (b) turn it on by default in mod_pagespeed and perhaps give users an option to stop mod_pagespeed from doing so. What are the reasons someone might wish to turn KeepAlive off? The only one I can think of is in single-process mode (httpd -X) it can be a drag to refresh a page with lots of resources; but this seems like a secondary issue that could be worked around if needed. -Josh
