the active connection in nginx status is always increased, i am use rhel
and nginx 0.8.54, the gcc and configure line:
built by gcc 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-10)
configure arguments: --with-http_gzip_static_module
–with-http_stub_status_module --with-http_geoip_module
–add-module=/root/ngx_cache_purge-1.2
–add-module=/root/nginx_upstream_hash-0.3.1
before 0.8.53 not occurs.
Posted at Nginx Forum:
http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,182264,182264#msg-182264
maybet traffict of your web possibility is grow
re-checking your nginx configuration and make sure that. 
and don’t forget checking error_log file
Regards
Posted at Nginx Forum:
http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,182264,182277#msg-182277
i have 4 nginx and the same configuration use lvs dr load balance, two
of them have this problem:
Active connections: 4476
server accepts handled requests
27097803 27097803 27064329
Reading: 1959 Writing: 2517 Waiting: 0
netstat -an | wc -l
459
and the normal server:
Active connections: 8
server accepts handled requests
58386943 58386943 58312509
Reading: 2 Writing: 6 Waiting: 0
netstat -an | wc -l
1104
These two error server have the same kernel version:
Linux abc.com 2.6.9-78.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Jul 9 15:46:26 EDT 2008 x86_64
x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
I do not know where it went wrong.
Posted at Nginx Forum:
http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,182264,184016#msg-184016