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Speeding up Firefox

I found this little gem on Forevergeek.com. If you a nice fast broadband connection, this power-user tweak will instruct Firefox to make multiple connections so it can download more pages at once. Zoom-zoom....

Here's something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up:

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

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Published Saturday, January 01, 2005 2:49 PM by Rob Garrett

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Eli Allen said:

As to connection limit, yes you can do that on IE too:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q183110/
And yes you are breaking the HTTP protocal standard
in 8.1.4 http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2616.html
[quote]
Clients that use persistent connections SHOULD limit the number of simultaneous connections that they maintain to a given server. A single-user client SHOULD NOT maintain more than 2 connections with any server or proxy. A proxy SHOULD use up to 2*N connections to another server or proxy, where N is the number of imultaneously active users. These guidelines are intended to improve HTTP response times and avoid congestion.
[/quote]

But then on second thought this config change may not change the number of actual connections to the server but only the max depth of the pipeline.

As to pipelining through a proxy, probably a bad idea as most proxies don't do HTTP 1.1 and so don't support pipelining (it was added in 1.1). Also as most people don't use piplining its like most software features that people never use, not very well tested so may be buggy.

As to nglayout.initialpaint.delay, its more of a psychological thing. Most people get annoyed when a page has to relayout itself so the delay allows for more of the page to load before it starts doing the layout. So it just decreases the period of time between the request and the first display of an incomplete page.
January 2, 2005 10:27 PM
 

Rob Garrett said:

[quote]
As to connection limit, yes you can do that on IE too.

That's great, but if you're a Firefox user, as I am, you need a way to mess with the advanced settings also - thus the post.

[quote]
And yes you are breaking the HTTP protocal standard
Clients that use persistent connections SHOULD limit the number of simultaneous connections that they maintain to a given server.
[/quote]

..and I care why?
January 3, 2005 7:11 AM
 

secret said:

Dont worry the persistent connection limit is untouched by the settings above so everything will be well in RFC reqs. when using the above settings.

February 3, 2005 9:42 PM
 

John Link said:

The Http RFC was written when their was LITTLE bandwidth. Now that everyone has bandwidth and CPU power it needs to be revised.
March 15, 2005 7:28 PM
 

. said:

"..and I care why?"

Yah, that's good. Let's make sure everyone properly abuses web servers.
July 16, 2005 2:03 AM
 

anurag mathur said:

can anybody tell me when does a request retransmission happens in Firefox?? Please help ... I need the information urgently!!
August 2, 2005 8:18 AM
 

Rob Garrett said:

Hmmm, I don't know personally, but someone reading here might.
August 2, 2005 9:37 AM

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Rob Garrett is a British Expat living in Maryland USA. Rob is a trained software engineer and experienced in Windows .NET development.

Rob enjoys listening to Rock music, posting to blogs, driving in the country with the sunroof open, beer (not in conjunction with country driving) and spending time with his family.

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