Considerations for Implementing Pipelining

These are the practical considerations that we have learned from implementing pipelining

Output Buffer Size: Should be set to about 1/2 of the TCP buffer sixe returned by getsockopt. This avoids that the network blocks too much on writing.
Client should Write with Patience and Read as Fast as Possible: As most servers read as fast/slow as they write, clients should not write too much to the network. I have found that it is useful to not pipeline more than 100 requests at a time. The client doesn't gain anything performance wise, and the mess from cleaning up a prematurely closed connection gets pretty bad.
Flush Delay: I use 30-50 ms, which is on the limit of human perception. Probably a better way would be to take into account the RTT of the connection.
Explicit Flush in the API: Is often needed as the application has a better knowledge of the page construction and hence when to flush
Turn off Nagle: When using pipelining and output buffering, it is often a good idea to turn off Nagle's algorithm.

Henrik Frystyk Nielsen,
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