diff --git a/solr/CHANGES.txt b/solr/CHANGES.txt
index 13c6542f553..4407ba49875 100644
--- a/solr/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/solr/CHANGES.txt
@@ -228,6 +228,9 @@ New Features
 
 * SOLR-2049: Add hl.multiValuedSeparatorChar for FastVectorHighlighter, per LUCENE-2603. (koji)
 
+* SOLR-1881: add a url-scheme config string to SearchHandler to specify alternate
+  URL prefixes for distributed search shard requests.  (Sami Siren via yonik)
+
 Optimizations
 ----------------------
 
diff --git a/solr/example/solr/conf/solrconfig.xml b/solr/example/solr/conf/solrconfig.xml
index 40790aeeb80..4436d38c679 100755
--- a/solr/example/solr/conf/solrconfig.xml
+++ b/solr/example/solr/conf/solrconfig.xml
@@ -543,6 +543,9 @@
      <arr name="last-components">
        <str>spellcheck</str>
      </arr>
+     <!--
+     <str name="url-scheme">httpx</str>
+     -->
   </requestHandler>
   
 
diff --git a/solr/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/component/SearchHandler.java b/solr/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/component/SearchHandler.java
index cbb7f97e53d..2817d2cf64b 100644
--- a/solr/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/component/SearchHandler.java
+++ b/solr/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/component/SearchHandler.java
@@ -64,9 +64,14 @@ public class SearchHandler extends RequestHandlerBase implements SolrCoreAware
   // cannot be established within x ms. with a
   // java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Connection timed out
   static final String INIT_CONNECTION_TIMEOUT = "shard-connection-timeout";
+
+  // URL scheme to be used in distributed search.
+  static final String INIT_URL_SCHEME = "url-scheme";
+  
   static int soTimeout = 0; //current default values
   static int connectionTimeout = 0; //current default values
-
+  public static String scheme = "http://"; //current default values
+  
   protected static Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(SearchHandler.class);
 
   protected List<SearchComponent> components = null;
@@ -148,6 +153,12 @@ public class SearchHandler extends RequestHandlerBase implements SolrCoreAware
       soTimeout = (Integer) so;
       log.info("Setting shard-socket-timeout to: " + soTimeout);
     }
+
+    Object urlScheme = initArgs.get(INIT_URL_SCHEME);
+    if (urlScheme != null) {
+      SearchHandler.scheme = (String) urlScheme + "://";
+      log.info("Setting url-scheme to: " + urlScheme);
+    }
   }
 
   public List<SearchComponent> getComponents() {
@@ -403,7 +414,7 @@ class HttpCommComponent {
 
         try {
           // String url = "http://" + shard + "/select";
-          String url = "http://" + shard;
+          String url = SearchHandler.scheme + shard;
 
           params.remove(CommonParams.WT); // use default (currently javabin)
           params.remove(CommonParams.VERSION);