Network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server

From MozillaZine Knowledge Base

The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server.

This article describes the preference network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server. To add, delete, or modify this preference, you will need to edit your configuration — do not edit this article.

1 Background
2 Possible values and their effects
3 Caveats
4 Recommended settings
5 First checked in
6 Has an effect in
7 Related bugs
8 Related preferences
9 External links

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Background

HTTP is the application-layer protocol that most web pages are transferred with. HTTP keep-alive connections can be re-used for multiple requests, as opposed to non-keep-alive connections, which are limited to one request. Using keep-alive connections improves performance. If a proxy server is not configured, the total number of HTTP keep-alive connections the application can make to each site is limited by this preference. If more connections are needed, they are queued until a connection "slot" is available.

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Possible values and their effects

This preference takes values between 1 and 255 inclusive, directly corresponding to the maximum number of HTTP keep-alive connections the application can have open at once to a single server. (Default: 2. Firefox 3: 6)

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Caveats

This preference only has an effect if you are not using a proxy. If you are using a proxy, see network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy.
The maximum number of connections of any type to a single server is controlled by network.http.max-connections-per-server.
The maximum number of connections of any type is controlled by network.http.max-connections, which will always take precedent over this preference.
This preference has no effect unless Keep-Alive (network.http.keep-alive) is enabled.

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Recommended settings

If you are not using a proxy and experience problems not being able to download multiple files, you can raise this value. It is, however, considered poor etiquette to make too many connections to a server and may lead to you being banned from that server. Anything above 10 is excessive.

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