1 long HTTP connection vs 6 smaller ones

Hi, 

I'm trying to think in terms of serving flash videos to users using
apache. 

I'm starting from the premise that HTTP requests are expensive. The
regular way to do it, is to simply allow the flash player download the
FLV file from one request.

One small fine tunning idea is to split the one hour long FLV file,
into 6 chunks, 10 minutes each, and request each chunk, once the
currently playing chunk reaches its end. This causes 6 requests
instead of one big download. 

I'm trying to figure out if this chunking approach is better than 1
big download approach. 

Here's what I can say by now but I'd like to hear some other opionions
on why Not, or why yes:

Pros:

- if user decides not to watch the whole video, and stops the view at
chunk #2, then you and the visitor save bandwidth by not downloading
the other ones.

- http connections will be kept open for less time

Cons.

- 6 http requests are more than 1
- 1 big http request , keeps a connection open for a longer period of
time, while the flv file is downloaded

Any feedback  would be appreciated.

Thanks, 

Vladimir Ghetau


P.S. I know streamnig is the right solution for big video, but the
expense can be covered by using some fine tuning on progressive
downloads. 


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