1. Type "about:config" (without the quotes) into the address bar and hit return. Look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
network.http.max-connections-per-server
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server
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 10 to start out. I've had this set to as high as 100 while testing it out and everything was indeed much quicker but it also started to act as a psuedo dos attack against myself as my bandwidth could not support that many requests being sent out for very long and my connection would eventually become unresponsive before I would have to reset it. You can experiment with higher values like 30 but keep it limited to avoid overloading your connection.
Set "network.http.max-connections-per-server" to 20
Set "network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy" to 10
Set "network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server" to 8
Most tweaking guides suggest higher values. Mine are more conservative to avoid the above mentioned problems I experienced when trying out those values. The goal is to escape the default Firefox values which are not broadband optimized, not push the limits of your connection.
3. Right-click anywhere in the about:config tab 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 would prefer a page to load all at once but with a small delay while it receives the information then keep this at its default 250 or raise it to 500.
4. Find browser.cache.memory.capacity and set the value of it to the amount of memory your system has according to this chart. If you don't have this value already you can create it yourself.
32 MB | 2048
64 MB | 4096
128 MB | 6144
256 MB | 10240
512 MB | 14336
1 GB | 18432
2 GB | 24576
4 GB | 30720
8 GB and up | 32768
5. If you have a fast connection but a not so modern hard drive, I recommend you go into your advanced options>network and set the cache size of Firefox to 0. You should only do this if your connection is fast enough but if it is you will notice faster page loading. This is because you can often download something again much faster than Firefox can reload the cached version from the hard drive. If you have an SSD or Sata 3 drive I wouldn't worry too much about this as the same method could slow down performance if your hard drive is faster than your internet.
6. Disable any addons or plugins you don't need running or never use. These increase the overall memory usage and decrease the performance of Firefox very heavily.
network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
network.http.max-connections-per-server
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server
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 10 to start out. I've had this set to as high as 100 while testing it out and everything was indeed much quicker but it also started to act as a psuedo dos attack against myself as my bandwidth could not support that many requests being sent out for very long and my connection would eventually become unresponsive before I would have to reset it. You can experiment with higher values like 30 but keep it limited to avoid overloading your connection.
Set "network.http.max-connections-per-server" to 20
Set "network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy" to 10
Set "network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server" to 8
Most tweaking guides suggest higher values. Mine are more conservative to avoid the above mentioned problems I experienced when trying out those values. The goal is to escape the default Firefox values which are not broadband optimized, not push the limits of your connection.
3. Right-click anywhere in the about:config tab 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 would prefer a page to load all at once but with a small delay while it receives the information then keep this at its default 250 or raise it to 500.
4. Find browser.cache.memory.capacity and set the value of it to the amount of memory your system has according to this chart. If you don't have this value already you can create it yourself.
32 MB | 2048
64 MB | 4096
128 MB | 6144
256 MB | 10240
512 MB | 14336
1 GB | 18432
2 GB | 24576
4 GB | 30720
8 GB and up | 32768
5. If you have a fast connection but a not so modern hard drive, I recommend you go into your advanced options>network and set the cache size of Firefox to 0. You should only do this if your connection is fast enough but if it is you will notice faster page loading. This is because you can often download something again much faster than Firefox can reload the cached version from the hard drive. If you have an SSD or Sata 3 drive I wouldn't worry too much about this as the same method could slow down performance if your hard drive is faster than your internet.
6. Disable any addons or plugins you don't need running or never use. These increase the overall memory usage and decrease the performance of Firefox very heavily.
