HTTP Request / Response Chunking

Chunking is a concept introduced in HTTP/1.1 in order to reduce the amount of local storage required on the web server for sending responses.

In order to perform HTTP keepalives, the client has to know when the response has finished. With earlier versions of HTTP the response finished when the connection closed. So the client knew instantly the content was finished. With connection keep-alive the client has to know exactly when the response has finished. So the server does the obvious thing and specifies in the header the size of the response. But in oder to know the size, the server has to accumulate the WHOLE response so it can count the bytes and send the header.

So... That accumulation takes time (Time which could be sent streaming the response). And of course space. So the solution was a split the response into chunks. The server accumulates a small amount of response (e.g. Up to 1024 Bytes, the size of arbitrary) and sends a header telling the client the response is chunked. Then before each chunk the server tells the client I'm about to send X Bytes. It then sends X Bytes. The last chunk is always 0 length. i.e. no more data... The client then just has to accumulate, and knows when the response is finished. So it can re-use the connection to send another request.

So... It's very much like fragmentation as in the response is fragmented into chunks of data.

Now... The difference between the settings... If any data needs to be re-written by the LTM then you'll need to set re-chunking. I usually use always (selective has usually meant problems for most times I've needed it). Never means no re-chunking will be done. Which one is quicker? Depends on the environment. The speeds of circuits will affect it. You may have different MTU's on client/server sides etc...

There's a good article by Deb Allen online here => https://devcentral.f5.com/articles/ltm-http-profile-option-response-chunking which probably explains it a bit better than I have :) A lot more detail and time taken over it for a start.

H