SSL Offloading with Citrix Netscaler is not working when requesting PDF files

netscalerssl

we are working in one of our projects with Citrix Netscaler in front of our web site.
we configured the Citrix Netscaler to use SSL offloading but when we request a PDF file the SSL offloading does not work properly. when browsing html pages it works fine.
Is there any issue with the SSL offloading in Citrix Netscaler?

Best Answer

Yes, agree with ImmL, insufficient information.

Most likely causes are:

  1. "fast webview" enabled PDFs and the improbably stupid Acrobat/Acroread clients sending overly large HTTP "Range:" request headers which are dropped by the Netscaler. Proliferation of HTTP 206 responses in web server logs is a good indicator of this.
  2. improbably stupid MSIE+Acrobat interaction whereby MSIE prevents HTTPS content from being saved to disk, appears to download the PDF file, then starts Acrobat plugin with a file that does not exist.

The server-side work-arounds are, respectively: 1. disable fast webview when creating PDFs, and/or increase HTTP header size limits 2. to allow PDF caching, set Cache-control: to remove "no-cache", add max-age=0; unset any Pragma: header. Or Save-As then Open PDF manually.

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