Simulating Multiple Connections to Webserver

[Panthaur]

Greetings All,

I have an odd question for you all. I currently have some applications that log onto web servers and download pictures. The problem I have is that they allow only a single connection and sometimes the application is taking many hours. I'd like to speed up this process, and I seem to remember hearing something about simulating multiple connections over a single connection to a web server.

Can anyone help me on this, or direct me to some links on doing this sort of thing? I've been googling all day and can't find anything.

Thanks,
Pan

 

[BobRodes]

Well, you could put the connection logic in a SingleUse ActiveX EXE, but there's no guarantee that it will speed things up. In fact, if it does, please let everyone know.

Bob

 

[Panthaur]

See, what I am trying to accomplish is to be able to download multiple pictures at the same time. I was thinking of creating series of reusable active x controls within the same form and assign each of those controls a series of files to download.

The problem arises when we have a website that requires login information, we are then limited to 1 connection, so having X number of activex controls would be useless, because they would all be trying to open a connection, and only 1 of them would be able to function. What I am trying to accomplish is to somehow make use of the same connection for all 10 active x controls thereby allowing me to download 10X the images, but still be under the same connection.

Would your idea the single use activeX exe work? And if so, can you give me a few more details as I'm not sure what you are envisioning.

Thanks, Pan

 

[BobRodes]

I hear you, and have the feeling that the server will limit you to one session. You probably won't get any performance boost by trying to trick the website at your end, if in the end you have to mix all of your trickery down to a single session anyway. However, if there's some way to open up multiple sessions on the website, you might get (MIGHT get) some performance enhancement. Also, if you're downloading from multiple websites at the same time, you might. It really depends on where the bandwidth bottleneck is. Depending on where it is, there are different ways to enlarge the bandwidth.

As for SingleUse ActiveX EXEs, you have one instance of them for each reference you create. If your EXE exposes a connection to the website, it follows that multiple instances expose multiple connections to the website. However, if they each use the same session on the website, the website may well consolidate your multiple client-side connections into one server-side connection, with the probable result that they would all share the same bandwidth.

Bob