How do you enable SSL sessions for your HTTPS service?

Question

Following on from the best answer here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/548029/how-much-overhead-does-ssl-impose

Is there a way to optimise SSL beyond a simple apache SSL install?

From the best answer given on that page I infer that there is some way to set-up persistent SSL sessions over multiple calls (where there is less handshake overhead). Is that correct?

If so, what's the best resource to learn about configuring the server to work that way?

Answer 1

SSL session caching is one optimization, which you can configure for Apache by looking at the discussion here. Look at the SSLSessionCache directive and related.

This will boost your performance for usage patterns that have the same client hitting the server multiple times within the session timeout period. However, when the pattern tends more toward one server hit per client for numerous clients, you won't see any speedups.