C#: Is there a faster way to check if an external web page exists?
<p>I wrote this method to check if a page exists or not:</p>

<pre><code>protected bool PageExists(string url)
{
    try
    {
     Uri u = new Uri(url);
     WebRequest w = WebRequest.Create(u);

        w.Method = WebRequestMethods.Http.Head;

     using (StreamReader s = new StreamReader(w.GetResponse().GetResponseStream()))
     {
      return (s.ReadToEnd().Length &gt;= 0);
     }
    }
    catch
    {
     return false;
    }
}
</code></pre>

<p>I am using it to check a set of pages (iterates from AAAA-AAAZ), and it takes between 3 and 7 seconds to run the entire loop. Is there a faster or more efficient way to do this?</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>
