Sunday, June 13, 2010
Anu
Usually http requests are sent sequentially to the server from our browser. When downloading a webpage for viewing the server first sends all the text to the browser in one response. The browser then acknowledges the delivery and requests for the next item. Usually, each image on a webpage takes one response for getting transmitted from the server to the browser i.e. all the images on a webpage are not sent to the browser in one go. After receiving the first image the browser acknowledges and requests the next item (not necessarily an image). This is the main reason for a slow browsing experience over pages with lot of visual content.
The Good News:
Firefox provides us with a facility to modify the number of requests that our browser will make at once to the server for requesitng items on the page. This facility is called "pipelining".
NOTE: To implement this tweak, you must have a broadband connection. If you are using a Dial-up connection bookmark this window, order for a broadband connection and then come back. And if u don't use firefox, download it, you won't regret it.
Steps:
1) Open a new tab in firefox and type "about:config" in the address bar (without qoutes)
2) You will be asked to understand the underlying risks, just click the button
3) In the Filter bar type "network.http" (without quotes), you will be taken to all the attributes starting with that. Now do 2 things:-
i) Set network.http.keep-alive to true. If it is false, double click it to change it's value
ii) Set network.http.version and change it to 1.1
4) In the filter box search "pipelining"
i) Set network.http.pipelining to true
ii) Set network.http.maxrequests to 8
(many blogs or websites will ask you to set this value to a larger value, say 30. But it is of no use setting it to such a high value. On the contrary, it would lower your speed as firefox allows a maximum of 8 multiple http requests)
iii) Set network.http.proxy.pipelining to true ( If you are on a proxy server. If not, setting this value to true wont harm)
5) Reboot
There you are... Enjoy the surfing experience improved by this tweak.
Feel free to comment...
