Speed Up Firefox

speed up firefox

forevergeek.com has a useful guide on speeding up firefox for broadband users. basically after getting to the hidden config settings you set the browser to request more data that it usually does.

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!

137 thoughts on “Speed Up Firefox

  1. Are there any Firefox settings that will actually allow the STOP button to interrupt a page load? Isn’t that what STOP is supposed to be for?

    And boy, I’d sure like the “HOME” page and the “New Window” page be different– I NEVER want a new window to be “home”, either the current window or a blank would make more sense (IE does current window, which is most often what I’m wanting to do). I don’t suppose there’s a secret option for that…

    Checked out the Mozilla blog site responses to these hacks– they are so full of themselves– graphing the “phenomenal” increases in firefox downloads and all. And their page had a “comments” box which I had entered this stuff into first, but the thread is closed to comments which they don’t tell you until AFTER you type it in and hit “post”…

  2. this works for awhile but eventually the internet will start to slow down but at least in this hack it’s recomended alot lower than what i was recomeded a few monthes ago from another site i was told to put 400 in this was great at first then everything quickly slowed down

  3. All i want is to have MozillaFirefox stop from downloading .jpg pix etc.two times to save them.Old netscape dosent need to download twice -once to view and once again to save them.
    Why is this new MozFire so great taking double time and i have cable ,its SLOW ! Also it requires you to clear the download history along with the task bar Two more things to do, and if you do many pix too fast it fails totally? This is BETTER -I dont Think So !

  4. It does work! I tested it on sites that always load slowly and with these tweeks they load in under a sec. Secondly if a server can’t handle requsets like this then what we are doing is actually advancing technology, just because something is good doesn’t mean we should leave it alone! It means the oposite, we should push servers to support more connections and thus creating a faster internet overall, not a slower one. And I doubt that a website will block you because of how many connections your ip addy has on their server, let’s say i am a multimillionire, i have 50 comps in my house and we all want to see the victoria secret model show and I can’t because we all share the same IP (we’re networked) thats BS, I’ll believe it when it happens. the guy from mozillizine even said that it is a person/system dependent change, if it works for you great, no harm no foul, never mentioned a real down side, besides some sites looking “broken”. So all you nay-sayers just get lost, go make stuff up some where else, might i ssuggest a forum, where you can read a question the responde with “n00b”, i know you do it.

  5. Here’s another Firefox speed tip: I think the weakest link or slowest point with Firefox that I have noticed on my machine, even after tweaking the values is when it says, “looking up (the site name) at the lower left corner of the screen. It doesn’t always happen though. A way that I resolve this and help FF go faster by skipping a step is to lookup the IP address myself on the sites I visit frequently and bookmarking them as the IP address instead of the domain name.

    For example: Lets say I check out MSN.com out frequently and have it bookmarked. First I find out the IP address by going to start->Run->Cmd->enter and then simply ping http://www.msn.com . That tells me the IP address. Plug that IP into your browser then resave the bookmark. Voila, you have cut a step out of the process. Granted this will not work for every site and the speed up might be negligble but if you are reading this forum, you are interested in millisecond speed diffrences.
    You can also add all the stuff after the IP if needed like http://64.233.167.104/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
    instead of
    http://www.google.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
    Am I off base here or is this speeding things up slightly?

  6. Bad for the server?

    Well, as a sysadmin i’d say, yes it gives some seemingly extra load, and yes opening & closing connections takes a bit of CPU time, but with modern hardware, it’s so insignificant computational power spent for opening sockets that do i care?
    Besides, there are settings at server side to limit the connections, normally there is always extra threads/childs (depends upon do you have a current kernel version, and which OS) that there won’t be time spent for that.

    Along with that: I couldn’t care less if it spends a little more server CPU time, even as a sysadmin, as long as it makes users happier & more comfortable :)

  7. I’m confused with allo the post but i surely support that there shld not be much load on servers. Why we become selfish and request more and don’t let other to connect to servers.

    thats right..What is use of a fast browser when we have network all choked up..??

    Well RFC restrict connection to 2 , thats why many times we are not able to connect to servers when pipelining.maxrequest set to 30 or more..

    Be wise and let the maxrequest to 4..

    firefox people have done research on their products and they know what is best for the connection.

  8. That was my first tweek of Firefox(!)very cool.And it does work.I did lower the request rate though in consideration of what was posted about choking the server. It’s nice to have more speed but let’s not get too greedy and blow it for us all.

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