Use an agent to regulate connections.

Author: RubenVerborgh

lib/util/HttpClient.js

@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ var TransformIterator = require('asynciterator').TransformIterator,
  * It performs request pooling and time-based content negotiation.
  * @param {String} [options.request] The HTTP request module to use
  * @param {String} [options.contentType=* / *] The desired content type of representations
+ * @param {integer} [options.concurrentRequests=10] Maximum number of concurrent requests per client
  * @constructor
  */
 function HttpClient(options) {
@@ -27,7 +28,7 @@ function HttpClient(options) {
     'accept-datetime': options.datetime && options.datetime.toUTCString(),
   }, _.identity);
   this._logger = options.logger || logger('HttpClient');
-  this._maxActiveRequestCount = options.concurrentRequests || 5;
+  this._maxActiveRequestCount = options.concurrentRequests || 10;
 
   // Set up request queue
   this._requestId = 0;

lib/util/Request.js

@@ -8,6 +8,14 @@ var EventEmitter = require('events').EventEmitter,
     https = require('follow-redirects').https,
     zlib = require('zlib');
 
+// Try to keep connections open, and set a maximum number of connections per server
+var AGENT_SETTINGS = { keepAlive: true, maxSockets: 5 };
+var AGENTS = {
+  'http:':  new http.Agent(AGENT_SETTINGS),
+  'https:': new https.Agent(AGENT_SETTINGS),
+};
+
+// Decode encoded streams with these decoders
 var DECODERS = { gzip: zlib.createGunzip, deflate: zlib.createInflate };
 
 // Creates an HTTP request with the given settings
@@ -19,6 +27,7 @@ function createRequest(settings) {
   // Emit the response through a proxy
   var request, requestProxy = new EventEmitter(),
       requester = settings.protocol === 'http:' ? http : https;
+  settings.agent = AGENTS[settings.protocol];
   request = requester.request(settings, function (response) {
     response = decode(response);
     response.setEncoding('utf8');