What is the effect of HTTP/1.1 persistent connections?

• A. They create a new connection for each request.
• B. They require TLS for all requests.
• C. They multiplex multiple connections in parallel.
• D. They reuse a single TCP connection for multiple HTTP requests.

Answer: (D)

HTTP/1.1 persistent connections keep the same TCP connection open and reuse it for multiple HTTP requests and responses. This means the client doesn’t have to open a new connection for every request, avoiding the overhead of repeated TCP (and often TLS) handshakes. The result is lower latency and better throughput when fetching several resources from the same server. The connection stays alive until either side closes it or an idle timeout occurs; HTTP/1.1 makes this the default behavior, unlike HTTP/1.0, which typically opened a new connection for each request. Note that HTTP/1.1 does not provide true multiplexing of multiple requests over a single connection the way HTTP/2 does; the main benefit here is reuse of the same connection rather than opening new ones.