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Oct 2025
25m 49s

Graceful shutdown in HTTP

Hussein Nasser
About this episode


There are cases where the backend may need to close the connection to prevent unexpected situations, prevent bad actors or simply just free up resources. Closing a connection gracefully allows clients and backends to clean up and finish any pending requests. 


In this episode of the backend engineering show I discuss graceful connections in both HTTP/1.1 via the connection header and HTTP/2 via the GOAWAY frame. 


  • 0:00 Intro
  • 4:58 Why shutdown connection? 
  • 6:46 HTTP/1.1 Graceful shutdown
  • 12:26 Cost of HTTP/2 
  • 17:40 HTTP/2 GoAWAY frame
  • 23:40 Summary


Links

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVKPrDrEwTI&t=1s 

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/net/%2B/master/socket/client_socket_pool_manager.cc#76

https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40555364

https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40501721


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