EdgeResponse Status 499 -- Requesting Client Expected Responses
Hello all, I have a strange scenario that I have been researching the Cloudflare doc's with AI to try and understand, but I keep going in circles and I am curious if others have faced the same scenario.
We have a client who reaches out to us frequently via API to our endpoints that are front ended by Cloudflare. 99.9% of traffic is processing correctly and without issue, but occasionally the clients request is being terminated in <1s. Our clients software has been coded for unexpected responses to perform a follow up 'find' request against our system to check the status. However, because the initial request was terminated so quickly the follow up find request is taking place within 1s from the original request which is too quick for the original request to complete and results in our client running duplicate requests.
From our perspective this is being recorded in Cloudflare HTTP logs as a 499 early client termination EdgeResponseStatus and feels out of our control.
What should be expected on a client's end when a request is getting interrupted/disconnected between the client and the Cloudflare edge? An empty response?
Is there any way to control a default response if nothing is returned from the origin server or cloudflare?
1 Reply
Support AI
I'm happy to help you with your question.
According to the Cloudflare documentation, a 499 EdgeResponseStatus indicates an "Early Client Termination" (https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003014512-4xx-Client-Error#499). This means that the client (in this case, your client's software) closed the connection before the request was completed.
Regarding your question about what should be expected on the client's end when a request is interrupted/disconnected between the client and the Cloudflare edge, the documentation doesn't explicitly state what the client should expect in terms of a response. However, it's likely that the client would receive an empty response or a connection reset error, as the connection was terminated prematurely.
As for controlling a default response if nothing is returned from the origin server or Cloudflare, the documentation doesn't provide a straightforward answer. However, you may want to explore Cloudflare's "Custom Error Pages" feature (https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200172706-Configuring-custom-error-pages), which allows you to configure custom error pages for specific error codes, including 499. This might help you provide a more informative response to your client's software in case of an early client termination.
It's also worth noting that you may want to investigate why the client's requests are being terminated so quickly, as this could be a sign of an underlying issue with the client's software or network connectivity.
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