Every time when a client sends any request (say HTTP), the request is received by a load balancer (if set up) and it will redirect the request to one of the instances. Now a connection is established between Client->LB->Server. This will persist as long as the client is constantly sending requests. But if client stops sending request to the server for a period of time(more then idle time), the load balancer will stop the communication between client and that particular server. Now if the client tries sending the request once again after some period of time then the load balancer should forward that request to some other instance.
What is idle time? It is a period of time when client is not sending any request to the Load balancer. It generally ranges between 60 to 3600 seconds depending upon the cloud service provider.
Finally my doubt.
Ideally after the idle timeout the load balancer should terminate the existing communication, but this is not the case with GCP's Internal load balancer(i have a PoC in this context too). GCP's load balancer doesnt terminate the communication even after idle time out and maintains it for infinite time. Is there any way one can re configure the load balancer to avoid such infinite time connection?