3.5.3 Resuming Sessions

The gnutls_handshake function, is expensive since a lot of calculations are performed. In order to support many fast connections to the same server a client may use session resuming. Session resuming is a feature of the TLS protocol which allows a client to connect to a server, after a successful handshake, without the expensive calculations. This is achieved by using the previously established keys. GnuTLS supports this feature, and the example (see ex:resume-client) illustrates a typical use of it.

Keep in mind that sessions are expired after some time, for security reasons, thus it may be normal for a server not to resume a session even if you requested that. Also note that you must enable, using the priority functions, at least the algorithms used in the last session.