Make FIREFOX Fly

[CunningStunt]

For the non tech heads who probably already have this covered, here's some instructions that will make firefox load pages crazy fast

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 40. This means it will make 40 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0" (without quotes). This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

[Damian_Maxcash]

Have you tried FF3 yet?

Damn, it is fast!!

[NinjaSteve]

Why would it not load crazy fast in the first place?

[CunningStunt]

Why would it not load crazy fast in the first place?

I mean CRAAAAZY fast - the pipelining is the key.

Not tried FF3 yet - thought I'd automatically have it downloaded

[joeman1]

not its in beta

[Fap]

hmm lets see..

[dready]

Or you can just install the 'Tweak Network' add-on.

[Fap]

i dont see a big difference..

[tabasco]

I would take care changing some of those things. I did this a while back and found my IP getting banned from a few sites... I assume flood protection or some shit.

[Iron Fist]

interesting thread

[wizzart]

I'm proud Opera user but nice info, thanks a lot

[CunningStunt]

hmmm, good point tabasco. maybe limit the requests to something like ten instead.

for those that don't notice any difference, you must be on a T3 link or something. I have the fastest home cable in Australia and it speeds it up at least by 200%.

[brandonstills]

Some sites seem to get fucked up and don't run properly when you do that. OMP is one of them. Anybody else notice that? I put them back to the default.

[Emil]

Fasterfox - performance and network tweaks for Firefox.

* Prefetch Links
Dynamic speed increases can be obtained with Fasterfox's unique prefetching mechanism, which recycles idle bandwidth by silently loading and caching all of the links on the page you are browsing.

* Tweak Network
Fasterfox allows you to tweak many network and rendering settings such as simultaneous connections, pipelining, cache, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.

* Page Load Timer
A millisecond accurate page load timer tests the effectiveness of your settings.

* Block Popups
A popup blocker for popups initiated by Flash plug-ins is also included.

* Locales included for Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian.

http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/

[sleazybunny]

What Emil said

Been using it for ages.

I.

[scarlettcontent]

cool stuff

[k0nr4d]

Fasterfox - performance and network tweaks for Firefox.

* Prefetch Links
Dynamic speed increases can be obtained with Fasterfox's unique prefetching mechanism, which recycles idle bandwidth by silently loading and caching all of the links on the page you are browsing.

* Tweak Network
Fasterfox allows you to tweak many network and rendering settings such as simultaneous connections, pipelining, cache, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.

* Page Load Timer
A millisecond accurate page load timer tests the effectiveness of your settings.

* Block Popups
A popup blocker for popups initiated by Flash plug-ins is also included.

* Locales included for Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian.

http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/

That is the single worst plugin and waste of bandwidth ever created. Every single user that uses this is costing webmasters money by pre-fetching page the user might never even visit.

[viencarl]

nice thread i learned a lot today

[NinjaSteve]

Fasterfox - performance and network tweaks for Firefox.

* Prefetch Links
Dynamic speed increases can be obtained with Fasterfox's unique prefetching mechanism, which recycles idle bandwidth by silently loading and caching all of the links on the page you are browsing.

* Tweak Network
Fasterfox allows you to tweak many network and rendering settings such as simultaneous connections, pipelining, cache, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.

* Page Load Timer
A millisecond accurate page load timer tests the effectiveness of your settings.

* Block Popups
A popup blocker for popups initiated by Flash plug-ins is also included.

* Locales included for Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian.

http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/

I use this, but I don't prefetch. I don't think it's really necessary with a broadband connection.

[NinjaSteve]

That is the single worst plugin and waste of bandwidth ever created. Every single user that uses this is costing webmasters money by pre-fetching page the user might never even visit.

I don't think it's that big of a deal really.

[GrouchyAdmin]

....

There's a reason why these are not the defaults: They break specifications, and are 'rude' to servers. If you hit a server with 40 simultaneous requests, and are not banned, they're incompetent, or have Google's network.

Please don't break the internet in an attempt to make your connection a little bit faster; there are many writeups on why you should not do this.

At the most, limit your requests to 4.

[borys]

* Prefetch Links
Dynamic speed increases can be obtained with Fasterfox's unique prefetching mechanism, which recycles idle bandwidth by silently loading and caching all of the links on the page you are browsing.

Sounds like an irresponsible waste of bandwidth to me.

[raymor]

40 simulataneous connections will have absolutely no affect unless there
are 40 images on the page (a thumbs page). On a page wil tons of images,
what will happen is that all of the images will load at the same time, so you'll
be waiting for all of them to load before you casn see the first one.
This as as opposed to the default of two simultaneous connections which
loads two at a time, so the first images pop up almost immediately and
they continue to load down the page. The defautl behavior will probably
bemmore useful 9% of the time and will appear faster. To state all that
in one sentence - 40 connections will make it seem slower, not faster.

Two connections is also the maximum defined by the HTTP protocol and
servers are explicitly given the option of ignoring you, banning you, or
whatever else they want to do if you exceed two. Popular browsers all
have default limit of two because that's a good number that makes it
seem fast. If a download manager comes into play, such as with Firefox,
a browser may use up to four connections - to for the download manager
and two for loading a page. Thus most sites will allow four connections
but many will block a fifth connection and the image won't load at all.
I know of several sites that limit you to two in accordance with the HTTP
protocol. Increasing that limits will just get you broken images.

The only time that more than two would be faster would be on an overloaded
server if you have a very fast connection. In most cases, two connections to
the server will max out your internet connection, or nearly so, so there is no
advantage at all to more connections. You'll only manage to be a dick head
holding open a bunch of connections slowly trickling data to your browser,
get broken images, and have to wait for the whole page to load before you
see even the first image at the top of the page appear.

[GrouchyAdmin]

Thank you, Ray.

Nobody listens to me.. unless they actually need me.

[raymor]

I, and others responding, misread the "40" for network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
as maxconnections. For the maximum number of connections somewhere
between two and four is good.

The maximum pipelining requests tells how many requests should be sent over
a single connection before the server responds to the first one. Pipelining is
helpful mainly to users with connections with high throughput but very poor
latency, such as satellite connections. That is, if you have a high Mbps
connection but ping times are poor. In additon, it is only helpful if the
page contains many small images smaller than 10KB or so. Over 10 KB,
download throuput is the limiting factor. Very high numbers for maxrequests
make the page appear slower in a fashion similar to a high number of
maxconnections, so Firefox will totally IGNORE you if you try to set this
higher than TEN. That last part bears repeating - setting maxrequests to
forty is such a bad idea that Firefox will laugh you off and ignore the setting
entirely. So in summary, if you're on a satellite connection or you're in the
Anarctic far from any web servers but have a high speed connection, set
maxrequests to six. For the other 99.99% of users, three is a good choice.
Some web servers can't do pipelining, so pages won't load at all. That's
why IE and Firefox have it turned off by default - not because the Firefox
developers aren't as smart as CunningStunt. That's true generally - the Firefox
developers know all about all of this stuff. They chose the default settings
for good reasons after extended discussion amongst serious geeks.
Unless you REALLY understand these things and think you're smarter than
the people who wrote Firefox in the first place, anything you chnage is likely
to hurt performnce and reliability, not help.

[judycash]

That is what I use and love it.. plus some other firefox plug-ins

Fasterfox - performance and network tweaks for Firefox.

* Prefetch Links
Dynamic speed increases can be obtained with Fasterfox's unique prefetching mechanism, which recycles idle bandwidth by silently loading and caching all of the links on the page you are browsing.

* Tweak Network
Fasterfox allows you to tweak many network and rendering settings such as simultaneous connections, pipelining, cache, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.

* Page Load Timer
A millisecond accurate page load timer tests the effectiveness of your settings.

* Block Popups
A popup blocker for popups initiated by Flash plug-ins is also included.

* Locales included for Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian.

http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/

[dozey]

In most cases, two connections to
the server will max out your internet connection, or nearly so, so there is no
advantage at all to more connections. You'll only manage to be a dick head
holding open a bunch of connections slowly trickling data to your browser,
get broken images, and have to wait for the whole page to load before you
see even the first image at the top of the page appear.

I realise you probably quoted this from somewhere else, but frankly, it is wrong.

In most cases, two connections to
the server will max out your internet connection, or nearly so, so there is no
advantage at all to more connections.

Rubbish. Pages should load in < 1 second over any decent "maxed out" connection. That's obviously not the case.

You'll only manage to be a dick head
holding open a bunch of connections slowly trickling data to your browser.

Again, chances are the bottleneck lies somewhere other than your computer... unless you've gone completely over the top with concurrent connections or use an underperforming browser.

get broken images

Presumably this means the connection has timed out. If not, you have bigger problems. Otherwise, you've gone nuts with way too many connections, your internet sucks, or most likely of all, the remote server is choking or blocking you.

have to wait for the whole page to load before you
see even the first image at the top of the page appear.

Once again, the chances are this isn't an issue of concurrency. These delays are attributable to the browser's rendering behavior, as noted in instruction #3; "This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves."

[Brad Mitchell]

Whatever my browsing just got a heck of a lot faster.. I'll post back if I run into problems!

Brad

[Jimmy Rock]

didn't see any difference

[CurrentlySober]

How to Make FIREFOX Fly ?

Throw it off a cliff....

[CunningStunt]

Whatever my browsing just got a heck of a lot faster.. I'll post back if I run into problems!

Brad

Precisely. I'm a noob at these hacks, so appreciate the warnings from others, and don't want to be getting anyone in any shiz / banned or anything.

Take it or leave it. Would agree though that limiting the maxrequests is a good idea. 40 is nuts really - was just following what a tech head suggested

[KILL_FRENZY]

Cool thread

[V_RocKs]

FF3 = no plugins... lame

[CunningStunt]

FF3 = no plugins... lame

You've gotta be kidding me?

[raymor]

I realise you probably quoted this from somewhere else, but frankly, it is wrong.

No, I attribute when I quote, and frankly most everything you said is obviously
ridiculous if one takes 20 seconds to think it through, as I will show.

Rubbish. Pages should load in < 1 second over any decent "maxed out" connection. That's obviously not the case.

Let's take 20 seconds to do the math:
This page, for example, is 341 KB.
Multiply by 8, that's 2731 Kb.
Add 8&#37; TCP overhead, your connection must transfer 2950 Kb.
The most popular high speed connection in the US, SBC standard DSL,
is capped at a theoretical MAXIMUM of 1500Kbs, though it generally
runs closer to 900Kbs. So to load this page in under a second one
would need a connection at least three times as fast as the typical
high speed connection. You are 300% wrong.

Again, chances are the bottleneck lies somewhere other than your computer...

Let's do 20 seconds of math:
On the three servers I just checked, on average they have 11 connections
currently sending data. One has a 10 Mbps connection, the other two are
unknown, but 10Mbps is reasonable. Therefore, they can send 900Kbps
on each connection. Note that this just happens to be the same as the
typical speed of most people's $25 DSL connection. These servers can
max out your internet connection using just ONE concurrent connection.
You said that 40 wouldn't max it out. You are 4000% wrong.

Get broken images

Presumably this means the connection has timed out. If not, you have bigger problems.

Rathet than presuming, how about listening to the guy who wrote the
code in the first place? You get broken images because Apache tells you and
your 40 connections to screw off, sending a 509 error status most of the time.
We send a 302 redirect to an error document if you're using IE AND are
downloading a very large file, due to the fact the IE's download manager is
stupid in it's treatment of the 509. I'm not presuming this - I wrote
that part of Apache.

have to wait for the whole page to load before you
see even the first image at the top of the page appear.

Once again, the chances are this isn't an issue of concurrency. These delays are attributable to the browser's rendering behavior, as noted in instruction #3; "This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves."

This is almost the definition of concurrency. The browser can't render anything
that it hasn't downloaded. If you have it downloading all 40 images at once,
they will all finish at about the same time, so the you must wait until all 350KB
can be downloaded before anything can be rendered. Stop a second here and
take 20 seconds to think this through before replying and embarrassing yourself.
This is the classic problem that has to be addressed in any software that
provides a service to other processes, whether it be an internet server
like Apache or a COM server. If you have one request or connection at
a time, each one can be handled very quickly, then when that one finishes
you do the next, then the next, on down the line, spitting out responses
serially. On the other hand, if you handle 40 things at a time, those 40
things all have to share your CPU / network connection / printer or whatever
the bottleneck is, so they take 40 times as long, then after a long wait they
suddenly all complete at once. Google "introduction to multithreading" or
the like for further discussion and examples.

Please, if you are a webmaster who spends his days building sites and
marketing, share your knowledge and experience in that area. If you
have an interest in internet protocols and software engineering, these are
interesting fields to study. But please take some time to study some of
the resources I can suggest before you continue to argue that which you
do not know. To realyl understand the browser, come on over to the
Mozilla Foundation, where we build Firefox. Browse through our bug tracker
to see how things work. You'll find closed ones, things we've done,
and open ones, things we're doing or may do in the future. Read through
the user documentation, then read the HTTP protocol at W3C. After
that, read the developer documentation and start working on some bugs.
You'll learn a LOT about the browser that way. To truly understand the
Apache server, check out the user and developer documentation and
mail groups such as modules-dev, the group for people developing
modules which load in to become part of Apache. You'll find me there,
a relative newbie to that group, and true experts such as Nick Kew, author
of "The Apache Modules Book", THE book about Apache internals. Nick is
a nice guy and always willing to answer intelligent questions.

To really learn about protocols such as HTTP, SMTP, etc., you are welcome
to join the Internet Engineering Task Force. The IETF is where we plan new
versions of HTTP, the protocol of the web, SMTP, the email protocol, and
most of the other specifications for how your computer interacts with the
rest of the internet. This group is the "hangout" of some of the best known
minds in internet technology, such as Vint Cerf, who invented the TCP/IP
protocols that the entire internet runs on. (Don't call him Vinton). You are
welcome to join today and start reading, being a part of the day to day work
we do on essential protocols that virtually every internet connected device
either uses today or will use ten years from now. This IS a high level group
of really smart people, so please read for a while and of course read and
thoroughly understand the actual protocol specifications before adding to the
discussion. Some of the suggestions and attitudes in this thread would NOT
be handled with the same polite education in IETF discussion. Rather, you
would probably be told quite rudely to stop wasting knowledable people's
valuable time and go ... well, it would be rude for me to say it. Let's just
say they would not be nearly as polite as I've been here.

[starpimps]

FF3 = no plugins... lame

I always wait until the final release, beta makes me sad