right now, for ease-of-bookkeeping reasons, libsoup never has more than one pending connection to any given host. (that is, after it starts a connect(), it has to wait until that completes before it will start another connect() to the same host.)

This causes poor network utilization in some cases, like loading the flags in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_capital_punishment_by_nation

<danw> hm... oh, yeah. so basically the problem is that libsoup doesn't want to have multiple connection attempts pending at the same time. so if you start with no connections, then it has to make the first attempt, and then when that succeeds, it will make the second attempt, etc.
<danw> but in this case, the server is slow to accept the connections, and then the resources are tiny, and it closes the connection after sending
<danw> so we end up spending most of the time with at most 2 connections working
<danw> because by the time the second one finishes connecting so the third can start, the first has already finished and closed