Making persistent connections using spring-ws client - https

Question

I am using a spring-ws client to invoke a web service in two way ssl mode. I need to make sure that I don't end up creating a new connection everytime - instead I re-use connections.
I did some re-search and found that by default HTTP 1.1 always makes persistent http(s) connections. Is that true?
Do I need any piece of code in my client to ensure connections are persistent? How can I check if the connections are persistent or if a new connection is being created vereytime I send a new request ?
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:oxm="http://www.springframework.org/schema/oxm"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/oxm http://www.springframework.org/schema/oxm/spring-oxm-3.0.xsd">
<bean id="messageFactory" class="org.springframework.ws.soap.saaj.SaajSoapMessageFactory"/>
<bean id="webServiceTemplate" class="org.springframework.ws.client.core.WebServiceTemplate">
<constructor-arg ref="messageFactory"/>
<property name="marshaller" ref="jaxb2Marshaller" />
<property name="unmarshaller" ref="jaxb2Marshaller" />
<property name="messageSender" ref="httpSender" />
</bean>
<bean id="httpSender" class="org.springframework.ws.transport.http.CommonsHttpMessageSender">
</bean>
<oxm:jaxb2-marshaller id="jaxb2Marshaller" contextPath="com.nordstrom.direct.oms.webservices.addressval" />
<bean id="Client" class="test.ClientStub">
<property name="webServiceTemplate" ref="webServiceTemplate" />
</bean>
</beans>

Answer 1

HTTP/1.1 has connection keep-alive but the server can decide to close it after a number of requests or does not support keep-alive
The easiest way to check is to use tcpdump or wireshark and check for SYN [S] flags. Thats new connections.
I am using the following and on J2SE 1.6 jdk it did not create any new sockets across multiple requests. The server did not send the Connection: Keep-Alive header but connections were kept alive anyway.
Bean configuration:
<bean id="wsHttpClient" factory-bean="customHttpClient"
factory-method="getHttpClient" />
<bean id="messageSender"
class="org.springframework.ws.transport.http.CommonsHttpMessageSender"
p:httpClient-ref="wsHttpClient" />
Java Code:
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.*;
import org.springframework.stereotype.*;
#Component public class CustomHttpClient {
private final HttpClient httpClient;
public CustomHttpClient() {
httpClient = new HttpClient(new MultiThreadedHttpConnectionManager());
httpClient.getParams().setParameter("http.protocol.content-charset",
"UTF-8");
httpClient.getHttpConnectionManager().getParams()
.setConnectionTimeout(60000);
httpClient.getHttpConnectionManager().getParams().setSoTimeout(60000);
httpClient.setHostConfiguration(new HostConfiguration());
}
public HttpClient getHttpClient() {
return httpClient;
}
}