Lately, there was some discussions on HAProxy’s mailing list about 408 errors printed in Chrome browsers.

Origin of 408 errors

408 is the status code used by web servers or proxies when the client has not sent a whole HTTP request during a certain period of time. It is an absolutely normal behavior!

That said, modern browsers have now some advanced features like “tcp pre-connect”…
As its name designate it, a browser may open tcp connection to web servers before you want to browse them. Purpose is to speed up browsing for the client by saving the time to establish these connections.
The problem, is that in most of the case, these connections won’t be used.
The other problem a very popular website can maintain thousands (or even tens or hundred of thousands) of connections that might be used.
It has an expensive cost on the server side for a so small positive effect on the client side.

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