Cisco Cisco IOS Software Release 12.2(27)SBC

Another example is to configure a policy that minimizes the response time for new connections by 
specifying small values for the life and request options so that the connections are quickly released to 
serve new clients.

A throughput policy is better for HTTP sessions with dedicated management applications, because it 
allows the application to send more requests before the connection is closed, while a response time 
policy is better for interactive HTTP sessions, because it allows more people to connect to the server at 
the same time without having to wait for connections to become available.

In general, you should configure these options as appropriate for your environment. The value for the 
idle option should be balanced so that it is large enough not to cause an unwanted request or response 
timeout on the connection, but small enough that it does not hold a connection open longer than 
necessary.

Access security policies for the HTTP server are configured using the ip http authentication command, 
which allows only selective users to access the server, and the ip http access-class command, which 
allows only selective IP hosts to access the server.

The ability to selectively enable applications using an HTTP server feature eliminates a potential 
security vulnerability by providing a facility to enable selected HTTP

 

services on the Cisco IOS HTTP 

server infrastructure. This feature also provides the capability to view the current state of the HTTP 
services, including which services

 

are enabled

 

or disabled.

Prior to this feature, HTTP applications running on a router or a switch were either all enabled or all 
disabled when the HTTP server was enabled or disabled using the ip http server command. In the 
situation where all HTTP applications were enabled, remote end-users were given potential access to 
services that could allow remote end-users to pose a potential security threat to service providers.

With ability to selectively enable applications using an HTTP server, the Cisco IOS HTTP infrastructure 
provides a way to enable only selected HTTP applications to run on a router or a switch, thereby 
bypassing a potential security vulnerability. Selected HTTP applications can be enabled using the 
ip http active-session-modules configuration command.

The maximum number of sessions that can be registered with the Cisco IOS HTTP server is 32.

This section contains the following tasks:

 

To enable the HTTP server and configure optional server characteristics, perform the following steps. 
The HTTP server is disabled by default.