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Speeding up your Internet Connections in Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer
Brian Walker
Britec IT Solution
There are a lot of tweaks out there for speeding up your internet browsing and downloading experience, but a lot of them are Bullshit. Some of them do work.
So, "Max-connections" tweak. Does this work? In my experience, it works great.
Why does it work? when you're browsing a website say (Autotrader) it has, lots of images on it - HTTP specifications say you're only supposed to download 2 of them at max at a time (4 for HTTP/1.0 servers)[1]. While these numbers reduce load on the servers[2], it also slows down the display of the page, as you're only getting images 2 at a time.
You will also notice this if you try to download multiple files from a site, for example 3 executable or movie files from the same server. If you have two already downloading, the third won't allow you to setup the download until you've finished one, which can lead to a lot of wasted time at the PC if you want to try it out for a example set up 4 to 6 large files to download.
As far as what numbers to use for each connection type, I have mine set to 8 (http) and 12 (http/1.0) and it works great. I recommend using 4 and 8, then trying with 6 and 10 if that's too slow, testing and increasing as you see fit. This is really a matter of personal preference I have seen people with settings as high as 24 and 48 give it a try a let me know if it works for you.
1. Start the Registry Editor (Start|Run|Regedit)
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Internet Settings
3. Select New > DWORD Value from the Edit menu
4. Name the new value MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server
5. Right-click the MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server value and choose Modify
6. Under Base, click the radio button next to Decimal
7. In the Value Data: box enter the number of simultaneous connections you want to set *see note above, and click OK
8. Repeat steps 3-7 using the new value MaxConnectionsPerServer
9. Exit the registry editor
10. Close ALL Explorer windows (I've found it safest to close all Folders too, and/or Reboot to be safe if it doesn't seem to work immediately).
1. Open Firefox
2. In the browser address bar type about:config (shortcut to the address bar using Ctrl+L)
3. In the search box that appears type network.http to shrink the list down to what we need
4. Find and modify the following values:
o network.http.max-connections to 128
o network.http.max-connections-per-server to 48
o network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy to 24
o network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server to 12
5. The reason I use higher number in Firefox is because I tend to have many tabs in firefox and will open a large number at any one time (for example, "Open all Blog bookmarks in new tabs")
6. Or, if you are very familiar with Firefox and know about user.js you can add the following lines: user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 128);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 24);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 12);
Opera
2. Go to Options > Network
3. Change Max connections to server to 48
4. Change Max total connections to 128
5. Change Size of network buffer to 32KB (this one might not actually do anything, I don't use Opera enough to have noticed a difference)
Article submitted Friday, May 16, 2008
This article has been viewed 3 times.
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