title: Speed of HttpWebRequest/HttpWebResponse
body: <p>Is there any quicker alternative to the code below to get a http response into a string?</p>
  
  <pre><code>string req = "http://someaddress.com";
  Stopwatch timer = new Stopwatch();
  timer.Start();
  using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())
  {
        using (Stream dataStream = response.GetResponseStream())
        {
              StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(dataStream);
              reader.ReadToEnd();
        }
  }
  timer.Stop();
  Console.WriteLine(timer.Elapsed);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The response is pretty big  - around 2MB and is in XML format. Affter this codes completes, the timer is equal to ~50 seconds. When I paste the same url into the browser window it takes about 35 seconds for it to display the xml document.</p>