Speed up Firefox! (sorry dial-ups, this is broadband stuff)

[Link Antilles]

I stumbled across this today.....

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!

Source: http://forevergeek.com/open_source/make_firefox_faster.php


I tried this out this afternoon and it works! O_o WOW, it really bumps up the speed.... CAA laods up instantly, now! Tis' awesome…. so, I thought I'd share.

Question for the Comp pros: How come Firefox doesn't come defaulted like this? Is this because settings like these aren't compatible on all versions or something?

[Jasdero]

*o* Really? Speeds up?

(((((((((((((( *o*) I will try this right now....

Edit: Is this for cable users, too?

[ShiroiHikari]

it does seem a bit faster. thanks for the tip :]

[Mr. SmartyPants]

ack you beat me to it, yes it does make things faster. It's very nice, somebody on another forum explain this, and its really nice

[Shao Feng-Li]

I think if you have cable then you have broadband...Wow this is much faster!

[Fsiphskilm]

>>>>Here's som

[glitch1501]

wow that works like a charm!
thanks

[Shao Feng-Li]

What would happen if we didn't go back to the default?

[Mr. SmartyPants]

then firefox wouldnt work, if you switched to dialup that is

[Jasdero]

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

Broadband only.

; ; Aww man... u.u\ Poor me and my cable modem... (((((((((( T_T)

[shooraijin]

Careful with pipelining. Not all servers support this, and it may make some sites inaccessible that use older webserver software. My advice is only do this if you need to.

[Fsiphskilm]

Sunako

[Jasdero]

Sunako... cable IS broadband

Dail-up is narrowband or whatever

DSL, Cable, T1, T2, T3 are broadband, well T1-T3 are like direct connections to the phone company. Full Sail's got LOTS of T3 connections, they can't have a T1 becuase they aren't close enough to a phone company but if you ask the Electronic guys how many T3 connections they have. they just say "LOTS, a LOT and i mean A LOT"

!!! So I can do this? *O*/ yay

[Icarus]

Sweet!

[Jasdero]

Finally did it.. XD;;;

*o*/ Yay for speed! X3

[Kaligraphic]

Okay, to explain these tweaks for those who are curious:

Pipelining is a way of asking for things faster. Essentially, by default, Firefox asks for one thing at a time, gets it, and then asks for the next thing. With pipelining enabled, it asks for more things at the start, and then the server can send them all without having to wait for you to get the whole thing and then request the next one.

Analogy: you buy one item online from Amazon. When it arrives, you buy the next one. Repeat.
Pipelining is like placing one large order to be shipped together. It's more efficient, uses fewer resources, and is generally a Good Thing. Down side is that, as shooraijin said, there are Luddite servers out there that don't support it yet. (I think there are still some out there that only support HTTP 1.0. The horror.)

Anyway, it's disabled by default because it can break compatability with some servers. Opera has some pretty cool code for determining whether or not a server supports pipelining - unfortunately, Firefox doesn't have that code, so it's just an all-or-nothing setting at this point. Basically, the fact that it's a setting at all is the reason it's disabled.

The network.pipelining.maxrequests bit tells Firefox how many things to request at a time. It's actually a bad idea to set it too high, because servers may time out before assigning resources to send you the rest of what you asked for. Fortunately, Firefox knows this, and, as I recall, it has a hard cap of (really thinking hard here) 8 requests at a time, unless you recompile. (I'm an Opera guy myself, but I'm pretty sure it's 8 requests max for Firefox.) Personally, I have it set to 4 on most of my Firefox installations.

The nglayout.initialpaint.delay tip is pretty good, but it's all perceptual. Still, it can make it feel "peppier". You will, however, see more jumping around as the page re-renders. Basically, it's up to your eyes, and nobody elses. (unless they use the same computer)

(hmm, I jumped back and forth a bit here in the quick reply box, so I hope this still explains it clearly.)