This Multi-Processing Module (MPM) implements an exclusively threaded web server that has been optimized for Novell NetWare.

The main thread is responsible for launching child worker threads which listen for connections and serve them when they arrive. Apache HTTP Server always tries to maintain several spare or idle worker threads, which stand ready to serve incoming requests. In this way, clients do not need to wait for a new child threads to be spawned before their requests can be served.

The StartThreads, MinSpareThreads, MaxSpareThreads, and MaxThreads regulate how the main thread creates worker threads to serve requests. In general, Apache httpd is very self-regulating, so most sites do not need to adjust these directives from their default values. Sites with limited memory may need to decrease MaxThreads to keep the server from thrashing (spawning and terminating idle threads). More information about tuning process creation is provided in the performance hints documentation.

MaxConnectionsPerChild controls how frequently the server recycles processes by killing old ones and launching new ones. On the NetWare OS it is highly recommended that this directive remain set to 0. This allows worker threads to continue servicing requests indefinitely.