```json
{
    "title": "Dear Apache Software Foundation: FIX THE MSIE SSL KEEPALIVE SETTINGS!",
    "url": "https://performancezen.com/2007/06/06/dear-apache-software-foundation-fix-the-msie-ssl-keepalive-settings/",
    "datePublished": "2007-06-06",
    "dateModified": "2022-04-25",
    "language": "en-US",
    "description": "Dear Apache Software Foundation, and the developers of the Apache Web server: I would like to thank you for developing a great product. I rely on it daily to host…",
    "author": "spierzchala",
    "publisher": "Performance Zen"
}
```

# Dear Apache Software Foundation: FIX THE MSIE SSL KEEPALIVE SETTINGS!

#### **Dear Apache Software Foundation, and the developers of the Apache Web server:**

I would like to thank you for developing a great product. I rely on it daily to host my own sites, and a large number of people on the Internet seem to share my love of this software.

However, it appears that you seem to want to maintain a simple flaw in your logic that continues to make me crazy. I am a Web performance analyst, and at least once a week I sigh, and shake my head whenever I stoop to use Microsoft Internet Explorer (**MSIE**) to visit secure sites.

I seems that in your SSL configurations, you continue to assume that **ALL** versions of MSIE can't handle persistent connections under SSL/TLS.
Is this true? Is a bug initially caught in MSIE 5.x (5.0??) still valid for MSIE 6.0/7.0?

The short answer is: I don't know.

It seems that no one in the Apache server team has bothered to go back and see if the current versions of MSIE -- we are trying to track down the last three people use MSIE 5.x and help them -- still share this problem.

In the meantime, can you change your SSL exclusion RegEx to something more, relevant for 2007?

##### Current RegEx:

```
SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
```

##### Relvant, updated REGEX:

```
SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE [1-5].*" nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0 SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE [6-9].*" ssl-unclean-shutdown
```

Please? *PLEASE?* It's so easy...and would solve so many performance problems...

Please?

Thank you.