urllib2 slow for multiple requests

[cgoldberg]

> The problem is, that CentOS is running on the server and there is only
> 2.4 available. On wich version did you ran these tests?

I tested with Windows XP and Python 2.5.4.  I don't have a 2.4 setup I
can easily test with.

you can try httplib rather than urllib2.  httplib is slightly lower
level and is actually used inside urllib2 for transport.

-Corey