I was told that establishing a network connection is costly. So how can we use LibCurl to minimize this cost?

I guess when it comes to connection cost, the URL (used to configure the Curl handle) is the only parameter to consider here.

So how does the connection creation/destruction scheme works with libCurl?

Say a handle is created:
CURL* handle = curl_easy_init();
obviously the connection is not established yet because no URL has been specified yet

Next the Url is specified:
curl_easy_setopt( handle, CURLOPT_URL, "<protocol>://<IP>[:<port>/<path</file>>" );

Is the connection established a this moment? Or is it created when executing
curl_easy_perform( handle );
?

And is the connection released automatically right after the call to curl_easy_perform?

Say another call
curl_easy_setopt( handle, CURLOPT_URL, "<protocol>://<IP>[:<port>/<path</file>>" );
is executed. Is the 1st connection released and a 2nd one created?

It is strongly assumed that if 2nd IP is different, then yes the 1st connection will be closed and another one created. Right? What if only the port is different on the 2nd

URL? What if the protocol is different?

In one word!

Given a sequential list of urls with different IPs, ports and or protocols..., which urls can be "performed" on the same Curl handle without creating new connections (reusing

the old one)? What criteria to use to dispatch the urls to the available handles? Does the server's IP matter? If it does, can all urls with same IP can be peformed optimally

on the same handle, no matter what port they use?

Thanks.

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Received on 2012-02-10