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It is well known that UNIX sockets are faster than TCP over loopback.

E.g. on my machine according to lmbench[1] they have ~ 2 times
lower latency and ~ 2-3 times more throughput compared to TCP over
loopback:

    *Local* Communication latencies in microseconds - smaller is better
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------
    Host                 OS 2p/0K  Pipe AF     UDP  RPC/   TCP  RPC/ TCP
                            ctxsw       UNIX         UDP         TCP conn
    --------- ------------- ----- ----- ---- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----
    teco      Linux 4.2.0-1  13.8  29.2 26.8  45.0  47.9  48.5  55.5  45.

    *Local* Communication bandwidths in MB/s - bigger is better
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Host                OS  Pipe AF    TCP  File   Mmap  Bcopy  Bcopy  Mem   Mem
                                 UNIX      reread reread (libc) (hand) read ...