"The urlopen() and urlretrieve() functions can cause arbitrarily long delays"

[7segment]

On Sun, 24 Feb 2013 11:55:09 -0700, Ian Kelly wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 10:48 AM, 7segment <7segment at live.com> wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> The subject is a segment of a sentence which I copied from Python's
>> official homepage. In whole, it reads:
>>
>> "The urlopen() and urlretrieve() functions can cause arbitrarily long
>> delays while waiting for a network connection to be set up. This means
>> that it is difficult to build an interactive Web client using these
>> functions without using threads."
> 
> I believe what this is warning about is that if a network connection is
> not immediately available when the functions are called, they will block
> while waiting for one rather than returning control to the calling
> function.  If used in an interactive client without threads, this would
> cause the application to appear to "hang" while urllib waits for a
> response.  I don't think it's meant to suggest that urllib is
> responsible for the delays; that sounds like a problem with your network
> configuration.

Thanks. I store all the data (response times) in a database. The figures 
I cited are always nearly the same. For example MSN has response times 
between 60-61 seconds consistently, my site 21-35 seconds, but python.org 
only about 0.3 seconds. the calls to the servers happen during the same 
minute.

And there's nothing wrong with my web connection at home.