[[modules-http]]
== HTTP

The http module allows to expose *elasticsearch* APIs
over HTTP.

The http mechanism is completely asynchronous in nature, meaning that
there is no blocking thread waiting for a response. The benefit of using
asynchronous communication for HTTP is solving the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C10k_problem[C10k problem].

When possible, consider using
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keepalive#HTTP_Keepalive[HTTP keep alive]
when connecting for better performance and try to get your favorite
client not to do
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunked_transfer_encoding[HTTP chunking].

[float]
=== Settings

The following are the settings the can be configured for HTTP:

[cols="<,<",options="header",]
|=======================================================================
|Setting |Description
|`http.port` |A bind port range. Defaults to `9200-9300`.

|`http.max_content_length` |The max content of an HTTP request. Defaults
to `100mb`

|`http.max_initial_line_length` |The max length of an HTTP URL. Defaults
to `4kb`

|`http.compression` |Support for compression when possible (with
Accept-Encoding). Defaults to `false`.

|`http.compression_level` |Defines the compression level to use.
Defaults to `6`.
|=======================================================================

It also shares the uses the common
<<modules-network,network settings>>.

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=== Disable HTTP

The http module can be completely disabled and not started by setting
`http.enabled` to `false`. This make sense when creating non
<<modules-node,data nodes>> which accept HTTP
requests, and communicate with data nodes using the internal
<<modules-transport,transport>>.