title: Keep-alive for long-lived HTTP session (not persistent HTTP)
body: <p>At work, we have a client-server system where clients submit requests to a web server through HTTP. The server-side processing can sometimes take more than 60 seconds, which is the proxy timeout value set by our company's IT staff and cannot be changed. Is there a way to keep the HTTP connection alive for longer than 60 seconds (preferably for an arbitrarily long period of time), either by heartbeat messages from the server or the client?</p>
  
  <p>I know there are HTTP 1.1 persistent connections, but that is not what I want. </p>
  
  <p>Does HTTP have a keep-alive capability, or would this have to be done at the TCP level through some sort of socket option?</p>