NAME

     accf_http — buffer incoming connections until a certain complete HTTP requests arrive

SYNOPSIS

     options INET
     options ACCEPT_FILTER_HTTP
     kldload accf_http

DESCRIPTION

     This is a filter to be placed on a socket that will be using accept() to receive incoming
     HTTP connections.

     It prevents the application from receiving the connected descriptor via accept() until
     either a full HTTP/1.0 or HTTP/1.1 HEAD or GET request has been buffered by the kernel.

     If something other than a HTTP/1.0 or HTTP/1.1 HEAD or GET request is received the kernel
     will allow the application to receive the connection descriptor via accept().

     The utility of accf_http is such that a server will not have to context switch several times
     before performing the initial parsing of the request.  This effectively reduces the amount
     of required CPU utilization to handle incoming requests by keeping active processes in
     preforking servers such as Apache low and reducing the size of the file descriptor set that
     needs to be managed by interfaces such as select(), poll() or kevent() based servers.

     The accf_http kernel option is also a module that can be enabled at runtime via kldload(8)
     if the INET option has been compiled into the kernel.

EXAMPLES

     Assuming ACCEPT_FILTER_HTTP has been included in the kernel config file or the accf_http
     module has been loaded, this will enable the http accept filter on the socket sok.

             struct accept_filter_arg afa;

             bzero(&afa, sizeof(afa));
             strcpy(afa.af_name, "httpready");
             setsockopt(sok, SOL_SOCKET, SO_ACCEPTFILTER, &afa, sizeof(afa));

SEE ALSO

     setsockopt(2), accept_filter(9)

HISTORY

     The accept filter mechanism and the accf_http filter were introduced in FreeBSD 4.0.

AUTHORS

     This manual page and the filter were written by Alfred Perlstein.