cURL 使用 HTTP 是否比 HTTPS 快？

Question

if we fire hundreds of requests in 1 second, is it better (faster) to use HTTP version of url than HTTPS ?

http://example.com/response.json
vs
https://example.com/response.json

Are there any technical reasons in the background of cURL for that?

Answer 1

HTTPS has overhead when compared to HTTP: in bandwidth (at the start of the connection) and in processing (encryption/decryption). The latter is usually negligible since you'll almost always hit bandwidth limit before the CPU limit. The bandwidth overhead is negligible if you have long-lasting connections (either big transfers, or a persistent connection); but if you open many short-lived connections, the connection overhead piles up.