FastCGI on IIS7... multiple concurrent requests from same user session?

Question

Caveat: I realize this is potentially a server configuration question, but I thought there might be a programmatic answer, which is why I am posting here...

Running PHP on Apache, our users were able to issue multiple concurrent requests (from different tabs in the same browser, for example).

Since moving to FastCGI under IIS, this is no longer the default behavior. Now, when a user starts a request to the server and the browser is waiting for a response, if they open a new tab and start another request, the new request is not processed by IIS until the previous request is completed by IIS.

If the user opens a different browser and logs in (which starts a new session for that user), concurrent requests are possible.

My question is: is there a way to configure FastCGI/IIS7 that will allow multiple concurrent requests from the same user session? If not, is there an alternative that would allow this?

Answer 1

The problem is the session mechanism, most likely. PHP Sessions, by default, since they are using the file system, have to wait for the session file to be closed before they can open them again. Therefore, subsequent requests for the same session wait on prior requests, or to give another example in addition to yours, if you had a frameset page (shudder) with three frames, each referencing the session, they would all load one at a time, because each page would have to wait for the session mechanism.

Possible Solutions:

• As soon as you're done with the session, call session_write_close()
• Implement a custom DB handler which utilizes the database instead of the file system.