How can I enable "keep-alive" if I'm with a web farm/cluster as a webhost, and they don't honor it?

Question

I'm with a webhost for my company's website that has 47 pages (asp.net 4/vb). All speed tests, Google, Yslow, Gtmetrix, etc., want me to enable keep-alive. I have already set http header requests to expire after 30 minutes via IIS7.

I submitted a ticket to my webhost, and they say they don't offer keep-alive. Does that just mean I'm stuck if I stay with this webhost, or is there something I can do on my own, regardless of my webhost? Thanks for any guidance!

Answer 1

If the webhost does not support keep-alive, I don't think there is anything you can do to enable it yourself. They are most likely not allowing it to be overridden.

I think keep-alive is nice to have, but less of an impact compared to some of the key practices like gzip compression, proper caching, and reducing the number of HTTP requests.

In your case if the need for keep-alive was significantly important, you could consider switching web hosts.