I'm running into a performance problem with Internet Explorer 11 and HTTP CONNECT requests going through a proxy server. The problem is that IE uses HTTP 1.0 when initiating the CONNECT request. Because it is using HTTP 1.0, there is a lot more connection traffic, which causes slow performance between the host and the proxy. As a note, the proxy is remote to the user.
Here is my environment:
* Windows 7 SP1, plus all patches via Windows Update as of August 28, 2014
* Latest version of IE 11, specifically version 11.0.9600.17207
* IE HTTP settings are as follows:
Use HTTP 1.1 (checked)
Use HTTP 1.1 through proxy connections (checked)
* Proxy: Blue Coat ProxySG 300 running SGOS version 6.5.4.5; No authentication and no SSL intercept
Other browsers, such as Firefox v31 or Google Chrome 36.0.1985.143m or 37.0.2062.102m use HTTP 1.1 with the CONNECT requests. Because they use HTTP 1.1 requests, the amount of traffic pulled across the wire is significantly less (about 1/6th the amount of traffic). This results in significantly better performance by the non-IE browsers.
I found a similar post at this location (http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie8-windows_other/how-to-force-ie-to-use-http11-over-ssl-through/360eca2d-e290-4078-ad37-7665bec706c4 ), but the post is five years old and not relevant because I'm not doing any authentication with the Blue Coat proxy. The same proxy config with non-IE browsers going to the same websites yields CONNECT requests being made with HTTP 1.1 instead of HTTP 1.0 requests. This appears to be an undocumented IE feature that when IE uses a proxy server and goes to an HTTPS site, it will only use HTTP 1.0 for CONNECT requests instead of HTTP 1.1.
Is this a known IE issue? If so, is there a registry setting that can be implemented to override this default behavior? If not, is there a patch/hotfix that can be downloaded and applied to address the problem?
If there isn't a patch, are there any plans to enhance IE so it will use HTTP 1.1 instead of 1.0 for CONNECT requests? If there are no plans, can plans be made to address this performance issue with IE?
Thank you for your time and assistance. It is appreciated.