Reply to post: It isn't, you know

It isn't, you know

TCP contains multiple round-trips (ping delays) just to set up and maintain a stream, and then SSL needs a few more to set up the encrypted channel.

If the number of serial request-responses is small, the setup cost will drown out the application traffic, but it'll still appear to take ages unless you have a good understanding of what's actually going on in all the layers.