persistant ftp

Has anyone examined the idea of making the ftp connections a little more
persistent?

ftpget could be modified to not shut down the control connection after
each ftp transaction, and to hold the connection open until either a
timeout period has expired, or a new request to a different host is given
to it by the parent squid. If a new request is received for the same
host, then the connection is reused - ie a cd command is sent to set the
right directory and then the ls or get is processed as per usual.

To take advantage of this squid would also need modifying so that when it
selected an ftpget to pass a request to it would have a record of the last
request processed by each ftpget, and then select the idle ftpget with the
same host (if available) or otherwise just the next ftpget in round robin
fashion.

I guess that for people browsing an ftp site this might well give a
significant speedup on the second and subsequent connections.

        Nigel.

-- 
[ Nigel.Metheringham@theplanet.net   -  Systems Software Engineer ]
[ Tel : +44 113 251 6012                   Fax : +44 113 224 0003 ]
[      Real life is but a pale imitation of a Dilbert strip       ]