HTTP Graceful Shutdown TL;DR

Ever wondered how to politely close an HTTP session without leaving hanging requests or resource leaks? In this episode of The Backend Engineering Show, Hussein Nasser breaks down why graceful shutdowns matter, showing how HTTP/1.1 uses the Connection header and HTTP/2 uses the GOAWAY frame to cleanly terminate connections. He’s even timestamped each segment so you can jump straight to the good bits.

Beyond the core concepts, you’ll find links to Chromium source code, Node.js internals, and a suite of backend, networking, and database courses—perfect if you want to level up your shutdown game.

Watch on YouTube