title: How much overhead does SSL impose?
body: <p>I know there's no single hard-and-fast answer, but is there a generic <strike>order-of-magnitude estimate</strike> approximation for the encryption overhead of SSL versus unencrypted socket communication? I'm talking only about the comm processing and wire time, not counting application-level processing.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Update</strong></p>
  
  <p>There is <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/149274/http-vs-https-performance">a question about HTTPS versus HTTP</a>, but I'm interested in looking lower in the stack.</p>
  
  <p>(I replaced the phrase "order of magnitude" to avoid confusion; I was using it as informal jargon rather than in the formal CompSci sense. Of course if I <em>had</em> meant it formally, as a true geek I would have been thinking binary rather than decimal! ;-)</p>
  
  <p><strong>Update</strong></p>
  
  <p>Per request in comment, assume we're talking about good-sized messages (range of 1k-10k) over persistent connections. So connection set-up and packet overhead are not significant issues.</p>