Speed Up Internet Explorer

IMPORTANT: This article is for people who are happy and comfortable in making registry changes. Because your registry is a key player in the workings of Windows, it is advised that you should only carry out the following task if you feel you are happy to make registry changes. We cannot be held responsible if errors arise causing your computer not to function correctly.

Okay, now that's out of the way here is the ultimate tip in improving the speed of your Internet explorer browsing experience. If you are a modem user or ISDN user, you will notice the most increase in performance.

First I recommend always that you back up your registry. This is done by firstly loading RegEdit from your Start/Run menu bar. Just type RegEdit and it should load correctly. Now select the Registry menu item and then select Export Registry File. Make sure your Export Range has All selected. Once this has been checked, Enter a file name and press save into your prefered location. By doing this it ensures that if everything did go horribly wrong, you can revert to a previous version.

Now if you look at your registry you will see the huge list of folders down the left hand side. Now what you need to do is select the following in the correct order:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER> Software> Microsoft> Windows> CurrentVersion> Internet Settings>

Once you have selected the correct sequence, the following selections and changes are the most important.

Within the right hand window of RegEdit you will see there are two strings named MaxConnectionsPerServer and MaxConnectionsPerl_OServer, if these are not there then see below. Click on the first one, MaxConnectionsPerServer and then with the right mouse button click your right mouse button and then select Modify. A window will pop up at this point and you need to change the Value data to 6. Make sure at this point that Decimal is selected to the right. Even if you did not select Decimal, it would not matter because this will be the same as Hexadecimal unless it was over 10. So just ensure that Decimal is selected and it contains a value of 6. Now, Click ok and do exactly the same for the other registry entry called MaxConnectionsPerl_OServer.

If you find that 1 or both of these registry entries are no in your registry, then you will have to add them manually. To do this you need to move your mouse over to some white space in the right hand side of the registry editor. Right click and select the new option and then select DWORD Value. Now enter MaxConnectionsPerServer as the string name and then press the return key. Now repeat this process for MaxConnectionsPerl_OServer as the string name. Now modify these entries using the procedure above.

Once you are happy that everything has been done. Quit regedit and away you go. There is no need to reboot. If you fire up Internet Explorer you should notice a speed improvement when browsing the Internet.

This procedure works for both Internet Explorer 4 and version 5. It works because Internet Explorer is designed to comply with HyperText Protocol v1.1. This means that a browser only draws no more than 2 streams from a web server at any given time. You have now increased it to 6 streams because your web browser is capable of using more. Now you have increased it to 6, it can use six making your browsing experience in general much quicker.

Enjoy!