Consequences of HTTP simplicity

Servers have thousands of connections in time_wait state
- e.g.. AltaVista server is at > 4 million connections/day, or 50/second averaged over 24 hours
- Cost is primarily memory, on systems running reasonable TCP implementations
Losing congestion information on each URL
Poor user perceived performance
- Netscape multiple connection hack
Vanity servers with HTTP result in big servers using 100’s of I.P. addresses, due to oversight in protoocol
Connection opens may be congesting low bandwidth links, due to lack of flow control
Size of routing tables/routing caches in routers?