What's the maximum number of HTTP connections I can have open in one Windows Server 2008 box?

http, iis, performance, windows-server-2008

Solution

I found this:

http://blogs.msdn.com/david.wang/archive/2006/04/12/HOWTO-Maximize-the-Number-of-Concurrent-Connections-to-IIS6.aspx

To give a sense of scope - I have seen 50K+ concurrent connections to IIS6 on WS03SP1 x64 with 4GB RAM

Anything else you can find?

Problem

I have a web server hosting an HTTP chat application that works with long-polling. This means a client browser "polls" for new info and the server does not respond until there is info to send back, so the HTTP connection is left open for a long time, up to a minute. My question is how many of these connections the server can handle open at the same time before it dies. Of course, there is no precise number, but I want to get a grasp, an order of magnitude (1,000 , 10,000, 100,000?) Any insights related to this based on any experiences you may have had is more than welcome!

Original source