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Raising network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server?

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Sylvain Pasche

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Mar 16, 2008, 4:07:31 PM3/16/08

Hi,

I saw recently that IE 8 increased their number of downloads per
hostname from 2 to 6 [1]. Out of curiosity, I wrote a small testcase [2]
to measure what is the default settings in other browsers. The test
measures how many persistent connections are opened in parallel to a
given server:

Firefox 2: 2
Firefox 3: 2
Opera 9.26: 4
Opera 9.5 beta: 4
Safari 3.0.4 Mac/Windows: 4
IE 7: 2
IE 8: 6

So apparently Firefox will have the smallest default value in the latest
major browser versions once IE 8 is out.

The real question would be to know if raising that default value is
worth it from the user experience point of view.

On the other hand, the HTTP RFC recommends only 2 simultaneous
connections per server, but as Steve Souders points out: "... the spec
was written in 1999. Today’s clients and servers can support more
parallel downloads"

Sylvain

[1] http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2008/03/10/ie8-speeds-things-up/
[2] http://www.spasche.net/files/parallel_connections/