Your browser and network subsystem play a major role in the use of your computer. People are spending more and more time using their web browsers and the Internet, making the web browser the most used application on many users' computers. Now that you have optimized almost every major component of the operating system, let's cover the most used application and components it is dependent on, the web browser and the network that connects you to the Internet.

Optimizing Your Web Browser

On my computer the web browser is the most used application second only to my e-mail program and instant messenger. For society in general, the web browser is the most used application on the computer. Considering that you have already optimized, tweaked, and hacked almost every other component of the operating system for speed, it's important to cover the most used application as well.

Using the following tweaks, you can make your web browser work faster than ever before. How is this possible? Both Internet Explorer and Firefox have to adhere to web standards that specify how many connections a browser can make to a web server. By default in both Internet Explorer and Firefox, that amount is two at a time. The following tweaks will show you how you can dramatically increase that number to speed up and increase the parallel downloading of files your web browser needs to display a web page.

Speeding up Internet Explorer

Microsoft has made sure that Internet Explorer follows Internet standards by allowing you and your browser to download only two files at a time from any server. If you visit a web page with a lot of images and required files, such as CSS styles and JavaScript, you can easily end up with a scenario where your web browser has to make more than 40 requests to the web server to download all the files and then assemble the web page. Requesting only two of these 40 files at a time is going to be a lot slower than downloading, say, 10 of them at a time.

By tweaking hidden registry values, you can direct Internet Explorer to break Internet standards and download more than just two files at a time. Modifying this setting is simple to do, but be careful; the standards police will be after you. Follow these steps to speed up IE:

1. Click the Start button, type regedit in the Search box, and then press Enter.
2. After Registry Editor loads, navigate through...

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SoftwareMicrosoft\Windows\Curren tVersion\Internet Settings.

3. Right-click in an open space and create a new DWORD key, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1



4. Type MaxConnectionsPerServer as the name of the new DWORD key.
5. Right-click this key and select Modify.
6. Set the base to Decimal and enter a value greater than 2, as shown in Figure 2. I like to use 15 as my value here. Press OK when you are done.

Figure 2



7. Create a new DWORD key and type MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server as the name.
8. Right-click this key and select Modify.
9. Set the base to Decimal and enter the new value. Use the same value as used in step 6. Click OK when you are finished.
10. Exit Registry Editor and reboot your computer.

After your computer has rebooted, your new Internet Explorer settings are active. If you ever feel like undoing this tweak, just go back into the Registry and delete the MaxConnectionsPerServer and MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server keys that you created and reboot. Congratulations, you are now speeding on the information superhighway.

Speeding up Firefox

Firefox suffers from the same limitation on file downloads imposed on it as Internet Explorer by Internet standards. Thankfully, there is an easy way to modify the number of simultaneous downloads in Firefox as well. Additionally, you can do a few other things to speed up Firefox, such as reducing delays and enabling parallel downloads (which Firefox calls pipelining). Instead of editing the registry, you can use a cool hidden feature in Firefox to hack the raw configuration settings built right into the browser. Follow these steps to speed up browsing with Firefox:

1. Open a copy of Firefox if you do not already have it open.
2. Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter.
3. Scroll down the list and locate network.http.max-connections-per-server, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3



4 Right-click this setting and select Modify. Enter a higher value, such as 15, and press OK.
5 Enable parallel downloads, which is known as pipelining in Firefox. Scroll further down the list and locate network.http.pipelining.
6 Right-click this setting and select Toggle.
7 Scroll down and modify network.http.pipelining.maxrequests. Set this to a value of at least 15 and press OK.

Tip: If you use a proxy server to connect to the Internet, you will also want to toggle network .http.proxy.pipelining.

8 Let's reduce the paint delays in Firefox. But be careful with this one; according to the Mozilla Foundation, if you have a slower machine, this tweak can actually slow down Firefox. Right-click anywhere on the configuration screen and select New and then Integer.
9 Enter nglayout.initialpaint.delay in the name box and then 0 in the value boxes that pop up.
10 Close and restart Firefox to activate your new optimized settings.

Speeding Up Your Network Connection

The speed of your network connection does not just depend on the speed of your hardware. Windows is an operating system that is designed to work on a variety of different hardware and network setups. Because of the abstract nature of the operating system, it cannot be optimized for user-specific hardware setups.

Depending on the type of network connection you have, you might be able to tweak your connection so that the speed of your Internet connection as well as of your local area network will be faster. By hacking the system Registry and editing the TCP/IP parameters, you can fine-tune the values so that you can take advantage of the more reliable, faster Internet connections such as DSL and cable. Windows Vista has a new advanced network stack that does a much better job than previous versions of Windows of calculating what the best values are for your connection. However, the exact algorithms it uses are kept secret, so you never will know if it truly is using the optimal values for your specific network makeup. Because of that simple fact, I still feel it is best to set these values manually.

The next sections guide you through the steps of increasing both the speed of your local area network and your Internet connection.

Disabling unneeded protocols

Every computer comes with programs installed that you do not need. As with extra programs taking up space, extra protocols are just wasting your network connection and can actually slow it down. How is this possible? By default, a few different protocols are installed on your computer to allow for maximum compatibility with other computers on a network; these protocols each require bandwidth to operate. Most users will not use too many protocols, and their computers will use up a portion of their connection as they respond and transmit information for these protocols.

Additionally, with extra protocols installed on your network adapter connected to the Internet, you increase your risk that you will have security-related problems. One of the most common risks for broadband users is having the Client for Microsoft Networks networking protocol enabled on their connection and no firewall to block the public from their computer. This protocol allows everyone on their network, or local neighborhood if you have a cable connection without a firewall or router, to connect to the users' computers and view any files that they may be sharing. This fact alone should be a good enough reason for you to turn off the extra protocols. But with them disabled, you will save a little bandwidth as well.

Viewing protocols on your network adapters

Viewing the protocols installed and active on your various network adapters is very easy. Just follow these quick steps and you will be viewing them in no time:

1. Click the Start button, right-click Network, and then select Properties.
2. On the side menu, click Manage network connections. This will show a list of all the network devices installed on your computer.
3. Right-click any of the devices and select Properties. This will bring up a list of the protocols installed as well as active on your adapter (see Figure 7). The protocols that are installed but are not active are indicated by the absence of a check in the box.

Figure 7



Disabling a specific protocol

Now that you have the list of installed and active protocols on your screen, you are ready to disable a protocol. To do so, just click the check box to remove the check. Then click OK and the protocol will no longer be active on the network adapter. Take a look at Table 2 for help with the default Windows protocols. Any other protocols you may have listed that are not in Table 2 should be researched online before being disabled.

For optimal speed configuration, disable all protocols except for Internet Protocol Version 4. Note, however, that by doing so you will no longer be able to share or access shared files and resources, and certain programs and features that rely on the other protocols may not work.


Also keep in mind that if you have multiple network adapters in your computer—such as a wireless adapter, a wired network adapter, and a dial-up modem—you will have to repeat the preceding instructions for each device.


Extracted from "Vaio Club." - Works for me.