FireFox Tweaks

Increase the speed of your browsing with Firefox

Open Firefox.
Type "about:config" in the adress bar (no quotation marks).
Find these options, double click each one and change to below values:

network.http.max-connections: 48

network.http.max-connections-per-server: 24

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy: 12

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server: 6

network.http.pipelining: true

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests: 32

network.http.proxy.pipelining: true

Close Firefox and enjoy the faster browsing.

Thanks! :)

where did you find these settings ??

cool!

:thumbsup:

Thanks a bunch!

I'd been using CB Mozilla Optimiser 1.6.3 previously. After changing settings to your suggestions it would revert. So I removed it and applied your settings: much faster...>Go!

Noticibly faster. I'm impressed.
Thanks.

Everyone who has commented seems not to have experienced any problems, so I don't know if this is worth mentioning, but I will just in case.

Pipelining can cause problems, particularly for those who use very high speed connections. The pure concept of pipelining and the practical application of it are often at odds since the servers it affects sometimes are configured so that they can't deal well with it. The slower your connection, the better a performance increase you will see. Eventually, though, you'll reach a point where performance starts to reverse itself.

I have a 5mbps connection, and I simply can't use pipelining. In fact most websites I hit can't give me the speed my connection is willing to take, so pipelining would just be overkill even if it didn't cause an issue. But, it does cause a loading time problem, mostly on pages with a number of graphic files.

On the other hand, I turned on pipelining in FF on my mother's computer, and she has had a significant performance increase. Her DSL connection is much slower than mine, however.

So, anyway, just thought I'd mention it.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/http/pipelining-faq.htm

Normally, HTTP requests are issued sequentially, with the next request being issued only after the response to the current request has been completely received. Depending on network latencies and bandwidth limitations, this can result in a significant delay before the next request is seen by the server.

HTTP/1.1 allows multiple HTTP requests to be written out to a socket together without waiting for the corresponding responses. The requestor then waits for the responses to arrive in the order in which they were requested. The act of pipelining the requests can result in a dramatic improvement in page loading times, especially over high latency connections.

Pipelining can also dramatically reduce the number of TCP/IP packets. With a typical MSS (maximum segment size) of 512 bytes, it is possible to pack several HTTP requests into one TCP/IP packet. Reducing the number of packets required to load a page benefits the internet as a whole, as fewer packets naturally reduces the burden on IP routers and networks.

http://users-guide.org/index.php?c=text&id=29

Setting pipelining max requests to 32 really will make your FireFox faster, however you can get banned on some servers. That's because your actions can be mistaken as flood attack. If you are afraid of this possibility, set pipelining.maxrequests to 8. :evilgrin:

There are also numerous discussions of pipelining, it's various problems and benefits, in the Mozillazine forums.

I've got a fast cable connection and noticed the pageload slowdown. Sometimes I couldn't establish a connection to a server. The flooding explains that. The CB optimiser I was using set pipelining.maxrequests to 8, so I'm back to those settings. Interesting experiment though...

:kick::kick::kick:

I have a cable connection. So I set the pipelining value to 8. I tested it out on my web site which is all graphics art material. The connection is blazing fast. Thanks for this information. I've been using Firefox since yesterday.

I'm on a cable broadband connection and wanted to put all this to a strong test. I remembered that there are 11th century illuminated manuscripts on the web for the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. The large graphics files are *huge*. So I went over and the files open with much greater speed than ever before.

If anyone wants to try it out, I made this tiny url http://tinyurl.com/4ljys

Thanks again for the tips.

Just let me say I'm not trying to get people not to use pipelining, nor am I saying there's anything wrong with it. It works extremely well for some people. I am saying it is still somewhat experimental in its implementation. It's the servers you're hitting that experience the biggest issue, and what I worry about is that this may cause problems down the road.

Anyway, here's a good test:

Before doing anything, clear your browser cache. Tools>Options>CLEAR Cache

With pipelining turned on (8 request is good), go to this site:

http://www.bushflash.com/animation.html

Then, leave the page, clear your cache again, turn pipelining off, and go to the same page. If you're turning pipelining on and off via the user.js file or something similar, you'll have to close and restart your browser to complete this. I use an extension called Tweak Network Settings that allows you do to this on the fly. Or, if you know how, you can do it via about:config.

If you're going to experience problems with pipelining, you'll experience them on that site. It will manifest itself as some of the individual graphic images getting "stuck" while loading. Hitting that particular page with pipelining on and off is a pretty good measure of what it does for your performance. Couple that with testing on a Stopwatch site, and you'll get a good idea what it does for you.

For me, I load the page in 1-3 seconds (depends on how long it takes the 3rd-party linked images to load) with pipelining off. With it on, depending on the number of requests I'm sending, the page stops loading with about 25-50% of the images timing out.

DAMN!!!!!!!


This has definately sped things up, it is visible! Much Much faster now and I have a wireless cable equivalent.


Thanks!

settings? I might need to switch back at some point. Thanks.

Type in about:config in search box. Right-click anywhere in the page that appears and select New>interger. Name it " nglayout.initialpaint.delay " and set its value to "0 "
If you are on broadband it will load pages faster.

That is an excellent tweak for many systems, but be aware that the speed increase is an illusion. All that does is tell Firefox to start drawing the page before it has all the data it needs to draw it correctly. This can result in some pages appearing rather odd looking at first.

FWIW, all these tweaks are more easily accomplished via a user.js file, easier in the sense that if you want to change them, add to or delete them, you just have to change a line in the file.

The user.js file is a standard text file that can be created using any text editor, like Notepad. It should be placed in your default profile directory.

If you type about:config and don't see this value anywhere, right-click and add it as an Integer value. The name is

nglayout.initialpaint.delay

and the value it should be set at is

0

(zero, that is)

NOTE: This won't work for dialup users.

The pipelining values given were for broadband and they'll jam up your tiny little phone line....

I found these values in a long, detailed thread (url below) and they made a nice difference:

browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl : true
browser.xul.error_pages.enabled : true
content.interrupt.parsing : true
content.max.tokenizing.time : 3000000
content.maxtextrun : 8191
content.notify.backoffcount : 5
content.notify.interval : 750000
content.notify.ontimer : true
content.switch.threshold : 750000
network.http.max-connections : 32
network.http.max-connections-per-server : 8
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy : 8
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server : 4
network.http.pipelining : true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests : 8
network.http.proxy.pipelining : true
nglayout.initialpaint.delay : 750
plugin.expose_full_path : true
signed.applets.codebase_principal_support : true

Source URL:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=53650

:kick:

And with the increasing numbers of DUers wisely converting from IE to Mozilla/Firefox I'm kicking this back up. IE and Outlook are notorious hacker and spammer magnets. Ditch it now if you're using it. I never have used it much for this reason. I used Netscape for years before switching to its cousin Mozilla.