I am using the "nginx-ingress-controller" to use 'active connections' metrics in my HPA. But Nginx ingress is creating few connections to handle a large number of users. I am new to Nginx ingress so I don't know if it is expected behavior. I was expecting that 'active connections' should close to the number of concurrent users. Now due to less connection, my application is not scaling.

apiVersion: autoscaling/v2beta1
kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
metadata:
  name: ggs-hpa
  spec:
   minReplicas: 1
   maxReplicas: 10
   metrics:
   - type: External
     external:
       metricName: custom.googleapis.com|nginx-ingress-controller|nginx_connnections
       targetAverageValue: 6
   scaleTargetRef:
     apiVersion: apps/v1
     kind: Deployment
     name: ggs

I am using JMeter to create these users and my deployment is on the GKE cluster. I am using the default setting of 'nginx-ingress-controller', no customizations in Nginx config.

Can someone please help me to understand this behavior of connections? Thank you.