Closing database connections - pconnect (CI 1.7)

[eluser]novice32[/eluser]
In phpMyAdmin, I recently found out that Connection Aborted was 92.5%. I figured the reason is because in my database.php, I have

Code:

$db['default']['pconnect'] = TRUE;

.

What are the advantages and disadvantages to setting persistent connection to TRUE vs FALSE??. If TRUE, is it then faster? If TRUE, could can it cause database issue, potential crashes??

Please advise.