Graceful shutdown in HTTP

Graceful shutdown in HTTP

October 17, 2025 · 26 min

About this episode

This episode discusses the importance of graceful shutdowns in HTTP connections to manage resources and prevent issues.

There are cases where the backend may need to close the connection to prevent unexpected situations, prevent bad actors or simply just free up resources. Closing a connection gracefully allows clients and backends to clean up and finish any pending requests. In this episode of the backend engineering show I discuss graceful connections in both HTTP/1.1 via the connection header and HTTP/2 via the GOAWAY frame. 0:00 Intro 4:58 Why shutdown connection? 6:46 HTTP/1.1 Graceful shutdown 12:26 Cost of HTTP/2 17:40 HTTP/2 GoAWAY frame 23:40 Summary Links https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVKPrDrEwTI&t=1s https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/net/%2B/master/socket/client_socket_pool_manager.cc#76 https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40555364 https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40501721

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