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HTTP Connection Management: Keep-Alive & Pipelining

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The TCP handshake tax

Every HTTP request over a new TCP connection pays an RTT tax: TCP handshake (1 RTT), TLS handshake (1-2 RTT), then the actual request (1 RTT). On a 100ms latency connection, loading a page with 30 resources over HTTP/1.0 takes over 10 seconds just in handshake overhead.

HTTP's evolution — persistent connections, pipelining, HTTP/2 multiplexing — is primarily about reducing this overhead.

Packets in motion — click to inspect:

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