WOW! Make your browser faster!

**LorDiego01** · December 15th, 2006, 12:10 AM

Really, watch this vid,

http://www.spikedhumor.com/articles/...d_Firefox.html

follow the instructions, and surf the web faster.

Any IT people here know why this is not set to standard?? Would these changes make you more vulnerable to viruses or hackers??

I did this and now my browser is at least twice as fast.

**ChamberedRound** · December 15th, 2006, 12:23 AM

Originally Posted by LorDiego01

Really, watch this vid,

http://www.spikedhumor.com/articles/...d_Firefox.html

follow the instructions, and surf the web faster.

Any IT people here know why this is not set to standard?? Would these changes make you more vulnerable to viruses or hackers??

I did this and now my browser is at least twice as fast.

Some older, slower computers don't do as well when setting a browser to use multiple threads to download web pages. I believe it also puts a heavier per-user load on web servers. Default configurations tend to be setup to maximize compatibility with as many systems as possible.

Instead of 'hacking' these improvements in, there's also a plugin for Firefox called Fasterfox, which provides a nice GUI for setting up these tweaks. Here's the link:

http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/

**danp** · December 15th, 2006, 12:25 AM

Overall this works, but it can cause some pages to not load properly if the webserver does not support pipelining.

**D-FENS** · December 15th, 2006, 09:23 AM

FYI, Lots of sites will block you for using Fasterfox and some of these other hacks. They aren't nice to webservers. There's been a huge increase, lately, from Systems Admins to block Firefox users with various plugins installed to "surf faster". Most of the time, you aren't browsing faster, you're simply downloading other links while you peruse the content of a page. Then when you go to another page, it's already loaded or partially loaded. This hurts webservers because it's well known that most visitors will leave within 30 seconds or less upon reaching the site. Now, for that 30 seconds or however long you're on that page, it's constantly downloading other material from linked pages. So, if you spend 30 seconds downloading content but never make it off the front page and then leave, that server has just wasted a lot of resources on your desire to browse faster.

Just wanted to let everyone know and be careful. You *will* encounter sites that will block you from using Fasterfox and other Firefox "faster browsing" plugins.

Something you can do to name domain name resolution easier is to setup a DNS cache. Then when you type in an address, it consults the cache and will resolve to an IP in 3-5 milliseconds as opposed to 40-50 when consulting your ISP's DNS or an alternative DNS server. It's easy to do if you're running Linux, not sure about Windows though. I'm sure it's possible and will look into it if anyone is interested.

/IT Geek