GATE CS 2026 Set 1 Q.19: Application Layer: DNS, HTTP, SMTP, FTP

Which of the following statements is/are true with respect to the interaction of a web browser with a web server using HTTP 1.1?

HTTP 1.1 facilitates downloading multiple objects of the same webpage over the same TCP connection, if the objects are stored in the same server

HTTP 1.1 facilitates downloading multiple objects of the same webpage over the same TCP connection, even if they are stored in different servers

HTTP 1.1 facilitates sending a request for downloading one object without waiting for a previously requested object to be downloaded completely

HTTP 1.1 facilitates downloading multiple webpages on the same server to be downloaded over a single TCP connection

Official answer and solution

Solution

Use the properties of HTTP 1.1 persistent TCP connections and HTTP pipelining.

Option (A) is true: HTTP 1.1 uses persistent connections (Connection: keep-alive) by default, allowing multiple objects hosted on the same server to be fetched over a single TCP connection.
Option (B) is false: A TCP connection is defined by a 4-tuple (client IP, client port, server IP, server port), so objects on different servers cannot share the same TCP connection.
Option (C) is true: HTTP 1.1 supports pipelining, allowing the browser to send multiple HTTP requests back-to-back over a persistent connection without waiting for each previous response to complete.
Option (D) is true: An open persistent TCP connection to a web server can be reused to fetch multiple webpages hosted on that same server.

Final answer

Options (A), (C), (D)

The answer is the one in the official GATE answer key. The solution is this site's own explanation.

Paper: GATE 2026 Computer Science and Information Technology - Session 1 (CS1)
Question: 19 of 65
Section: Computer Science and Information Technology

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