Are HTTP connections opened and closed for each request? [closed]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Do browsers create new TCP connections for each HTTP requests?

I have a F5 load balancer that directs traffic to 2 web servers with one having a higher priority than the other so all traffic gets sent to it. If the higher priority server goes down this would mean all traffic would get directed to the lower priority server.

My question is if somebody is directed to the lower priority server because the high priority server is down and then the higher priority server comes back up again will the existing connections be maintained to the lower priority server.

I ask because I am being told that they would stay connected to the lower priority server because the TCP connection would remain open. I thought HTTP connections open and close when an object is downloaded so this would be continuously creating new connections and be directed to the high priority server when it came back up.

Answer 1

HTTP supports keep alives, where a connection is kept alive between the server and the client and re-used for subsequent requests. Most web servers permit you to tune the maximum amount of time a connection can stay open without any activity and how many requests can be sent over the same connection.