Socket creation too slow versus URLConnection

Question

I'm trying to write a transparent proxy like polipo.
Polipo is written in C and I want to have the same result in java.
A simple program that can filter/monitor all connections created and closed by the browser.
To do so, I've chosen to work with sockets, because that's the only way i know to read and write raw data to and from the browser in a completely transparent way.
In this moment my code reads and writes every couple of request/response but I've noticed profiling it that the time needed to create the socket is a bottleneck.
Using URLConnection to create the same connection I need much less time than sockets.
When socket creation implies 50ms URLConnection implies only 1ms.
I haven't still understand why.
I don't want to reinvent the wheel and i've read some old post where this problem was known, but I haven't found the solution.
Can anyone help me to understand if the approach is incorrect?

Answer 1

Creating a socket with a host and port parameter implies actually creating the TCP connection.
Creating a URLConnection just implies creating an object in memory. The TCP connection isn't created until you call getInputStream(), getErrorStream(), or getResponseCode().
So your measurements are worthless.
If creating TCP connections is taking excessive time, look to your network and your DNS system.