Socket Pool

Definitions

1. A cache of pre-established, reusable network socket connections maintained by an HTTP client or application to avoid the overhead of repeated TCP handshakes and TLS negotiations. Browsers typically maintain per-origin socket pools (Chrome caps at 6 per origin), and server-side HTTP clients like Go's http.Transport manage idle connection pools similarly.

   In plain English: A set of ready-to-use network connections kept open so programs don't waste time creating new ones for every request.

   Example: "We bumped the socket pool from 5 to 20 connections per host because the microservice was bottlenecked on connection setup latency."

Related Terms

• UDP
• QUIC
• Latency vs Throughput
• MTU
• Anycast
• Redis Pipeline
• Resource Pool
• Server Push