The Apache Tomcat Connectors project is part of the Tomcat project and provides web server plugins to connect web servers with Tomcat and other backends.
The supported web servers are:
- the Apache HTTP Server with a plugin (module) named mod_jk.
- Microsoft IIS with a plugin (extension) named ISAPI redirector (or simply redirector).
In all cases the plugin uses a special protocol named Apache JServ Protocol or simply AJP to connect to the backend. Backends known to support AJP are Apache Tomcat, Jetty and JBoss. Although there exist 3 versions of the protocol, ajp12, ajp13, ajp14, most installations only use ajp13. The older ajp12 does not use persistent connections and is obsolete, the newer version ajp14 is still experimental. Sometimes ajp13 is called AJP 1.3 or AJPv13, but we will mostly use the name ajp13.
Most features of the plugins are the same for all web servers. Some details vary on a per web server basis. The documentation and the configuration is split into common parts and web server specific parts.
down to the more detailed documentation that is available. Each available manual is described in more detail below.