From #1183:
A bit of history: The ENABLE_TRACKING_QUERY_PARAMETER may be leftover from when we first started working on this idea (or reading the HDF5 file's chunks using HTTP Range-GET requests). There was a bit of a boondoggle where a fairly hefty regex was used and we lost a substantial amount of performance due to that. I maybe off base here, but watch out for accidentally turning that old code on - I'm pretty sure it is still in the software.
Originally posted by @jgallagher59701 in #1183 (comment)