Persistent connections or no? Please help, server getting hammer ed.

I got linked by a popular site today and am getting positively hammered by connections. I was using persistent connections, as it's a fairly simple database that is going to get a lot of traffic.. each user views a page with a database connection required on it about 100 times per user session, so I thought persistent would be the way to go to cut down on the overhead.. problem is I got a lot of lingering connections around.. not sure if I should lower mysql's wait timeout, or if I should be using regular connects and closes constantly. Chad Day Beach Associates When I speak german... I think german in my head... but like...Do skript kiddies see a w40l3 8uncha 1's and 0's and 3's and 4's and 7's in their h34d'5 w43n t43y R +a1k1n6 ? -- SirStanley