Keep-Alive Not Enabled with HTTPS
Hawk Host utilizes the LiteSpeed web server, which supports HTTP/2 and SPDY protocols when serving content over HTTPS. Both of these protocols do not use the Keep-Alive header, as they have more efficient connection handling mechanisms built in.
Why Keep-Alive Is Not Needed
Section titled “Why Keep-Alive Is Not Needed”The Keep-Alive header was designed for HTTP/1.1 to allow multiple requests to share a single TCP connection. HTTP/2 and SPDY replace this functionality with:
- Multiplexing — Multiple requests and responses are handled simultaneously over a single connection.
- Header compression — Reduces overhead for repeated requests.
- Server push — Allows the server to proactively send resources to the client.
These features make the traditional Keep-Alive header unnecessary, as the newer protocols manage connections more efficiently by default.
Impact on Performance Testing
Section titled “Impact on Performance Testing”If you are running performance tests (such as with GTmetrix or Google PageSpeed Insights) and see a warning about Keep-Alive not being enabled, this can be safely ignored when your site is served over HTTPS. The HTTP/2 protocol provides superior performance compared to HTTP/1.1 with Keep-Alive.