net-http-persistent manages persistent connections using Net::HTTP plus a speed
fix for Ruby 1.8. It's thread-safe too! Using persistent HTTP connections can
dramatically increase the speed of HTTP. Creating a new HTTP connection for
every request involves an extra TCP round-trip and causes TCP congestion
avoidance negotiation to start over. Net::HTTP supports persistent connections
with some API methods but does not handle reconnection gracefully.
Net::HTTP::Persistent supports reconnection and retry according to RFC 2616.