I've googled around, and I can't find any info on why java.net.URLConnection is abysmally slow. I have observed the problem on os x (with java 1.4.2), linux, and pocket pc (running ibm's j9). It ...

Born at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1980s, sockets first appeared in the Unix world as the Berkeley Sockets Interface, a programming device designed to help far-flung networked ...