Supporting HTTP Multipart Batch Requests

About HTTP batched requests

When applications make multiple independent HTTP requests, each request incurs overhead in terms of payload size (the data that is transmitted with the request) and RTT (round-trip time), which refers to the time it takes for a request to travel to the server and back to the client.

The HTTP Batching allows multiple HTTP requests to be grouped into a single request, reducing overhead. Instead of sending many requests individually, client can send the requests as a single batch request to improve efficiency.HTTP Multipart Batched Request Format defines a format for packaging multiple, independent HTTP requests into a single multipart MIME payload. The intent is to provide applications with a method of grouping sets of individual HTTP requests for processing as a unit. It is designed to work around several limitations that currently exist in HTTP pipelining. In BIG-IP ASM/Advanced WAF, a batch request will be detected by Enforcer as follows:

1. When the request has a multiple/batch or multiple/batching in the Content-Type header.
2. When the request has a URL that starts with $ and has multiple/mixed in the Content-Type header. The URL doesn’t have to be defined explicitly in the policy (or even be defined at all) - this handling will happen regardless of how the URL is defined).

Note: The batch request is not a content profile and will not be used as such. The HTTP batch detection will happen before the content profile header-based detection happens.