Slow nginx behavior when using as reverse proxy for https

Setup:

1. Dummy SSL endpoint
2. Install Nginx on localhost

Steps:

1. Hit the hookb.in endpoint using browser for very first time and we get network activity like below. It took 865 ms
   Fig 1

2. Subsequent hit to hookb.in endpoint using browser take much less time as it is using the same tcp connection, below is the screen shot for ref. (All Good!!)
   
   Fig 2

3. setup the http-> https reverse proxy using below nginx config

worker_processes 1; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { keepalive_timeout 65; server { listen 80; server_name localhost; location /session { proxy_pass proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Connection "keep-alive"; proxy_ssl_session_reuse on; proxy_socket_keepalive on; } } } 

4. Now from browser hit and nginx will work fine and proxy the content from https site.
   But nginx response time is always 200ms more than compared to accessing https site directly. Screen shot below for ref
   Why nignx is taking extra time , is it opening new ssl connection every time or is there something else?
   I understand with reverse proxy we are adding extra hop , but 200ms is big difference.
   How can i fix it ?
   

1 Answer

The configuration you are using implies that nginx will open a new connection to upstream server for each proxied request. To configure nginx to keep upstream connections alive, please see the description of the "keepalive" directive here:

Notably, make sure to configure an upstream block with the "keepalive" directive. Something like this at the http level should work, assuming no other changes in the configuration:

upstream hookb.in { server hookb.in:443; keepalive 2; } 

In the example above, nginx will keep up to two connections.

(This is mostly unchanged copy of my response in the nginx mailing list.)