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Hussein Nasser: HTTP Graceful shutdown | The Backend Engineering Show

HTTP Graceful Shutdown TL;DR

In this Backend Engineering Show episode, Hussein Nasser dives into why you’d ever want to close HTTP connections gently—think freeing resources, dodging bad actors, and wrapping up in-flight requests without drama. He breaks down how HTTP/1.1 uses the Connection header to signal “I’m outta here soon” and then jumps into HTTP/2’s more sophisticated GOAWAY frame (plus the trade-offs you need to know).

He timestamps each deep dive—from the “why?” at 4:58, through HTTP/1.1’s shutdown dance at 6:46, to the cost of keeping all those fancy HTTP/2 streams alive, and finally the nitty-gritty GOAWAY protocol at 17:40—wrapping up with a neat recap at 23:40.

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