Pointers and sockets - fun-strating!

All,

I have two questions relating to the same project I am working on:

Basically, I'm having to POST xml data from IFS stream files to a HTTP
server. This data will be validated by the host and a synchronous response
will be sent back informing me of the status. I have had to write a simple
HTTP client to do this - all in RPG. I am reading the files on to a pointer
and then sending the data to the host using send(). So far, it's working
fine, but I will need to send files with sizes exceeding 64K:  

1) I believe pointers can have up to 16Mb allocated to them, but %str will
only allow up to 64K of data to be written to the pointer. How would I go
about writing more than 64K of data to a pointer?

2) If I connect to a remote host using a socket and the host disconnects, do
I need to go through the process of creating the socket again or do I simply
call the connect() procedure again to reconnect? Also, how can I check that
a connection is still open? (does that make it three questions? :-) )

I would REALLY appreciate some input on this.

Thanks everybody

Cheers

Larry