Why does my load balancer add the header "Via 1.1 localhost.localdomain"

Question

My load balancer (a Rackspace Cloud Load Balancer instance) adds the Via header with these values:

Via 1.1 localhost.localdomain

What does this mean and is it harmful?

Note: According to another question Google also serves this in production.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 19 '13 at 14:26

1

Load balancers are effectively proxies, so they pass the "Via" header along so your web server can record it for statistics. Otherwise, all traffic would be appearing from the load balancer instead of individual clients.

The "localhost.localdomain" should be configurable in the balancer itself.

answered Jun 19 '13 at 14:26

Nathan C

15,059
4
43
62

Thanks. What business value do I get in configuring this "localhost.localdomain" name? – Simon Gibbs Jun 19 '13 at 15:16
I should have asked before - where did you do the test from? If I remember correctly, the Via header is supposed to have the IP address of the client. – Nathan C Jun 19 '13 at 15:21
Two different windows PCs – Simon Gibbs Jun 20 '13 at 16:29

Why does my load balancer add the header "Via 1.1 localhost.localdomain"

1 Answers1