RE: Persistant connections and pipelining...

>>> "Fish" <fish@infidels.org> 24-Oct-00 5:01:17 PM >>>

>> I'm under the assumption that because the hyperlinks
>> reference the same address/port, a single connection should 
>> be used to retrieve the 'documents'.

>If the server that's servicing your requests is an HTTP/1.1 
>compliant server, it should -- if it *can*.

But "using persistent connections" is open to some interpretation (as
always).

RFC2616 section 8.1.4 suggests that a client might want to open more
than one connection to a server but also suggests that clients limit
that to 2 connections per server.

However... I've seen some versions on IE 5.0 do up to 5 connections
per server.

2 connections per server (for a non proxy client) would seem to be
about right - it enables documents and referenced content to be
downloaded fairly simultaneously whilst maximizing connection re-use.

Latest versions of IE 5.0 (that I've seen anyway) seem to stick to
the 2 connections per server rule of thumb.


Nic Ferrier