In anticipation of a client device establishing a connection over a network with a remote host service, a pre-connect module generates a connection request (referred to herein as a “pre-connect request”) on behalf of the client device and sends the pre-connect request to the remote host server. The remote server responds with a connection response (referred to herein as a “pre-connect response”), which is pre-positioned on the client-side of the network along with information for generating a later connection request that is in material respects the same as the pre-connect request. Then, when the client device later seeks to establish a connection with the remote host server, the client device determines whether it has in local storage generation information for generating a connection request to the remote host server. If so, the client device uses the generation information to generate a connection request that is in material respects the same as the pre-connect request. An interceptor on the client-side of the network intercepts connection requests and determines whether a corresponding pre-connect response is locally stored. If so, the interceptor sends the locally stored pre-connect response as a complete response to the intercepted request, which can be discarded.