How do I make cURL use keepalive from the command line?

Solution 1:

curl already uses keepalive by default.

As an example:

curl -v http://www.google.com http://www.google.com

Produces the following:

* About to connect() to www.google.com port 80 (#0)
*   Trying 74.125.39.99... connected
* Connected to www.google.com (74.125.39.99) port 80 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.19.7 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.19.7 OpenSSL/0.9.8k zlib/1.2.3.3 libidn/1.15
> Host: www.google.com
> Accept: */*
> 
< HTTP/1.1 302 Found
< Location: http://www.google.ch/
< Cache-Control: private
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
< Set-Cookie: PREF=ID=0dd153a227433b2f:FF=0:TM=1289232886:LM=1289232886:S=VoXSLP8XWvjzNcFj; expires=Wed, 07-Nov-2012 16:14:46 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com
< Set-Cookie: NID=40=sOJuv6mxhQgqXkVEOzBwpUFU3YLPQYf4HRcySE1veCBV5cPtP3OiLPKqvRxL10VLiFETGz7cu25pD_EoUq1f_CkNwOna-xRcFFsCokiFqIbGPrb6DmUO7XhcpMYOt3dB; expires=Tue, 10-May-2011 16:14:46 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com; HttpOnly
< Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2010 16:14:46 GMT
< Server: gws
< Content-Length: 218
< X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
< 
<HTML><HEAD><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">
<TITLE>302 Moved</TITLE></HEAD><BODY>
<H1>302 Moved</H1>
The document has moved
<A HREF="http://www.google.ch/">here</A>.
</BODY></HTML>
* Connection #0 to host www.google.com left intact
* Re-using existing connection! (#0) with host www.google.com
* Connected to www.google.com (74.125.39.99) port 80 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.19.7 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.19.7 OpenSSL/0.9.8k zlib/1.2.3.3 libidn/1.15
> Host: www.google.com
> Accept: */*
> 
< HTTP/1.1 302 Found
< Location: http://www.google.ch/
< Cache-Control: private
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
< Set-Cookie: PREF=ID=8b531815cdfef717:FF=0:TM=1289232886:LM=1289232886:S=ifbAe1QBX915QGHr; expires=Wed, 07-Nov-2012 16:14:46 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com
< Set-Cookie: NID=40=Rk86FyMCV3LzorQ1Ph8g1TV3f-h41NA-9fP6l7G-441pLEiciG9k8L4faOGC0VI6a8RafpukiDvaNvJqy8wExED9-Irzs7VdUQYwI8bCF2Kc2ivskb6KDRDkWzMxW_xG; expires=Tue, 10-May-2011 16:14:46 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com; HttpOnly
< Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2010 16:14:46 GMT
< Server: gws
< Content-Length: 218
< X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
< 
<HTML><HEAD><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">
<TITLE>302 Moved</TITLE></HEAD><BODY>
<H1>302 Moved</H1>
The document has moved
<A HREF="http://www.google.ch/">here</A>.
</BODY></HTML>
* Connection #0 to host www.google.com left intact
* Closing connection #0

This snippet:

* Connection #0 to host www.google.com left intact
* Re-using existing connection! (#0) with host www.google.com

Indicates it re-used the same connection.

Use the same "curl -v http://my.server/url1 http://my.server/url2" invocation against your server and check that you see the same message.

Consider using tcpdump instead of netstat to see how the packets are handled. netstat will only give you a momentary glimpse of what's happening, whereas with tcpdump you'll see every single packet involved. Another option is Wireshark.

Solution 2:

If your server allows 'KeepAlive On', you can use telnet to keep a persistent connection going like so:

$ while :;do echo -e "GET / HTTP/1.1\nhost: $YOUR_VIRTUAL_HOSTNAME\n\n";sleep 1;done|telnet $YOUR_SERVERS_IP 80

Solution 3:

One way to test HTTP persistent connection/Keep-Alive is to see if the TCP connection is reused for subsequent connections.

For example. I have a file containing link of http://google.com repeated multiple times.

Running below command will open http://google.com multiple times with the same TCP connection.

curl -K /tmp/file

And during this time if you netstat you can find that the TCP connection has not changes and the older one is resued (The socket remains the same).

$ sudo netstat -pnt|grep curl
tcp        0      0 106.51.85.118:48682     74.125.236.69:80        ESTABLISHED 9732/curl       
$ sudo netstat -pnt|grep curl
tcp        0      0 106.51.85.118:48682     74.125.236.69:80        ESTABLISHED 9732/curl       
$ sudo netstat -pnt|grep curl
tcp        0      0 106.51.85.118:48682     74.125.236.69:80        ESTABLISHED 9732/curl

But when we ask client to use HTTP 1.0 which dose not support persistent HTTP connection the socket address changes

$ curl -0 -K /tmp/file

$ sudo netstat -pnt|grep curl
tcp        0      0 106.51.85.118:48817     74.125.236.69:80        ESTABLISHED 9765/curl       
$ sudo netstat -pnt|grep curl
tcp        0      0 106.51.85.118:48827     74.125.236.69:80        ESTABLISHED 9765/curl       
$ sudo netstat -pnt|grep curl
tcp        0     74 106.51.85.118:48838     74.125.236.69:80        ESTABLISHED 9765/curl

from this we can be sure that the TCP connection is reused.

Solution 4:

--keepalive-time

man curl... man.. :D

Tags:

Http

Curl

Tcp

Netstat

Keepalive

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