How to speed-up a HTTP request

Question

I need to get json data and I'm using urllib2:

request = urllib2.Request(url)
request.add_header('Accept-Encoding', 'gzip')
opener = urllib2.build_opener()
connection = opener.open(request)
data = connection.read()

but although the data aren't so big it is too slow.
Is there a way to speed it up? I can use 3rd party libraries too.

Answer 1

Accept-Encoding:gzip means that the client is ready to gzip Encoded content if the Server is ready to send it first. The rest of the request goes down the sockets and to over your Operating Systems TCP/IP stack and then to physical layer.

If the Server supports ETags, then you can send a If-None-Match header to ensure that content has not changed and rely on the cache. An example is given here.

You cannot do much with clients only to improve your HTTP request speed.