This also surprised me. A large part of it I'm sure has to do with the fact that I'd assume (given these numbers) urllib2 auto follows redirection. The request

This also surprised me. A large part of it I'm sure has to do with the fact that I'd assume (given these numbers) urllib2 auto follows redirection. The request is to `http://` http://` so it must make an additional request. Otherwise I'd expect them to be much higher as there would be no 'body' to the responses.