Limiting Connections and Setting Connection Timeout

Limiting connections is a way to conserve bandwidth for other uses, such as e-mail. All connection attempts beyond the connection limit are rejected. When a browser stops working unexpectedly or a connection is lost in midstream, the site continues to process data until the timeout value is reached. Setting a timeout value reduces loss of processing resources for broken connections.

1. Use System Monitor to log the Current Connections, Maximum Connections, and Total Connection Attempts counters in at least the Web Service and FTP Service objects.
Continue logging until you have a good sense of the normal range; typically, this can take several days, to a week, or more.

1. In the IIS snap-in, select the Web site and click the Properties button to display its property sheets.
2. On the Web Site property sheet, select the Limited to option.
3. Type the maximum number of simultaneous connections you want to allow in the Maximum Connections box.

Note   IIS Professional has a 10-connection limit. The Unlimited option is not available. If you need more than 10 concurrent connections, consider upgrading to a Windows server product for unlimited simultaneous connections.

4. Type the connection timeout value in seconds in the Connection Timeout box.

Related Topics

• For more information on capacity issues, see About Capacity Planning.
• For information on how to throttle bandwidth, which is another way to limit connections to your Web server, see Throttling Bandwidth.
• For information on setting the CGI timeout, see Caching Applications.
• For a list of counters provided by IIS, see Counters Reference.
• For a list of all timeout values that can be set by IIS, see Timeouts Reference.

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