How to increase Cloudfront websockets idle timeout?

Question

I've connected a Cloudfront in front of my API Gateway with websockets and now every 15 seconds of idle communication on  my websockets the connection is closed (probably by cloudfront). When I was accessing the webscocket directly from the API Gateway it was not like that.

Answer

Hi there, adding CloudFront in front of your API Gateway, you add an annitional layer which affects the behavior of your websocket connection. In the [CloudFront service quotas ](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/cf_region.html#limits_cloudfront)you have following timeout settings.

| Name | Default | Adjustable | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Connection timeout per origin | 10 sec | No | The connection timeout per origin (1-10 seconds). |
| Request timeout | 30 sec | Yes | The maximum request timeout in seconds. |
| Origin response timeout (idle timeout) | 10 min | No | The maximum origin response timeout (idle timeout) in minutes. If CloudFront hasn’t detected any bytes sent from the origin to the client within the past 10 minutes, the connection is assumed to be idle and is closed. |
| Response timeout per origin | 60 sec | Yes | The response timeout per origin (1-60 seconds). |

The majority are not adjustable and if you keep your CloudFront setup, you'll have to implement something like a [Keep-Alive Message](https://api.deriv.com/docs/languages/javascript/websocket-connection#keep-websocket-connection-alive). It's quite a common workaround for dealing with websockets timeouts. It basically just sends a periodic ping message from the server to the client or vice versa.

Please verify if it's really a idle timeout which is triggered, because the non-adjustable idle timeout settings would be 10 minutes. Which seems to be more than enough for your use case.

Name	Default	Adjustable	Description
Connection timeout per origin	10 sec	No	The connection timeout per origin (1-10 seconds).
Request timeout	30 sec	Yes	The maximum request timeout in seconds.
Origin response timeout (idle timeout)	10 min	No	The maximum origin response timeout (idle timeout) in minutes. If CloudFront hasn’t detected any bytes sent from the origin to the client within the past 10 minutes, the connection is assumed to be idle and is closed.
Response timeout per origin	60 sec	Yes	The response timeout per origin (1-60 seconds).

How to increase Cloudfront websockets idle timeout?

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