Speeding IE9 up

1. Don’t Check For New Versions of Cached Sites

The Internet Explorer 9 regularly checks for newer versions of your stored sites. If you visit a lot of sites, IE9 is synchronizing a lot of websites. This can greatly slow down your browser. So, if you want to speed up the Internet Explorer, I would recommend to only checking for newer versions of stored pages when you start the browser. This is based on a recommendation by support.microsoft.com. Keep in mind that cached sites also speed up browsing speed, but what is actually slowing down your browser is when it checks for new versions of that site whenever you visit it. So, let’s change that behaviour and speed up the loading speed.

1. To do that, click on the gears icon and then on Internet Options.

2. Under Browsing History, click on Settings:

3. Next, either select Every time I start Internet Explorer or Never

Tip: If you don’t want to sync cached pages at all, it is better to select Never.

Pro Tip: You may enhance your browsing speed by storing the cache on your fastest drive, for example a SSD (Solid State Drive). Also for faster video buffering (YouTube) you may want to increase the disk space used for temp files to 250MB.

2. Speed up IE9 by Disabling Add-Ons & Toolbars

You can speed up Internet Explorer 9 by disabling extensions and add-ons. Some extensions are particular slow and you will notice quite a boost after disabling them. So, check your list of extensions carefully and disable all extensions that you don’t need or use infrequently.

Add-ons are a great way to extend the compatibilities of a browser. They often install themselves, but what if you want to disable some add-ons in IE9? Here’s how you disable them.

1. Open Internet Explorer 9

2. Click on the icon at the top right and click on Manage add-ons:

3. There are several different add-on types. Select the add-on type that you want to disable on the left side. You can disable Toolbars and Extensions, Search Providers, Accelerators or InPrivate Filtering. If you installed a 3rd-party add-on it’s most likely filed under extensions.

4. Let’s say you want to disable the Windows Live ID Sign-in Helper. Select it and click on the Disable buttons:

That was easy, huh? Yup there’s not much you need to know to disable add-ons in IE9.

3. Pro Tip: Increase MaxConnectionsPerServer

What is the MaxConnectionsPerServer value? That value determines how many simultaneous connections your browser makes to download files from a server. When the browser is using a low value, you can increase this value to speed up your internet connection. Every browser is using its own value, however you can increase this value in the registry and your browser (IE9 in our case) will use that value instead.

Unfortunately, I was not able to figure out what default value the new Internet Explorer 9 uses (please reply if you know the default value), but I suppose it uses a value of around 6-8 connections per server.

Did you know that Windows 7 limits the maximum connections of HTTP file transfers? Only two simultaneous file downloads are allowed. When you visit our homepage you make at least 30 requests alone (30+ pictures), which would be faster if you would allow more than 2 simultaneous connections (most browser already do that, more inside).

The MaxConnectionsPerServer Value

The maximum number of connections per server returned by the maxConnectionsPerServer property is determined by the HTTP version (1.0 or 1.1) used by the server. This number applies to any Web server connection, not just to downloads. Source: www.msdn.microsoft.com

Important:

Browsers can set MaxConnectionsPerServer

Users can set MaxPerServer via registry (browser value will be ignored)

All browsers can set their own value for the MaxConnectionsPerServer value. According to http://kb.mozillazine.org/ Firefox 3 uses a value of 15. Keep in mind there are normal connections and persistent connections. As a server admin you will need to take a closer look at persistent connections.

Increase MaxConnectionsPerServer Value

You can set a value for MaxConnectionsPerServer yourself and the browser will then use that value instead of its own settings.

Pro Tip: If you set the value too high you will quickly notice that websites (servers) will ban you. We do that too, so be careful. My recommendation is to set it to 12, which is not too high and not too low, but you can only try that yourself.

Create Registry File: MaxConnectionsPerValue

Insert the following text into a notepad, save it as a .reg file (replace .txt extension with .reg) and select All files from the dropdown when you save it, then double-click on it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]

“MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server”=dword: 00000012

“MaxConnectionsPerServer”=dword: 00000012

Alternative: Manually Editing Registry

1. Open the registry editor. Enter regedit.exe into the search field on your Start menu

2. Uncollapse HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings

3. Right-click in the right pane (last entry at the bottom should be ZonesSecurityUpgrade) and create a new DWORD registry key:

4. Enter MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server as the name.

5. Create another DWORD key (same as above) and give it the value MaxConnectionsPerServer

6. Double-click on the key MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server and enter the value 12

7. Repeat the last step for MaxConnectionsPerServer

8. Reboot

4. Remove Favourites from Internet Explorer 9

A large number of favourites can affect your browsing speed. You might want to export your favourites and then delete the most of them. Honestly, favourites are not a good way to manage things. I prefer to write a note to it to find what I want. To do that I use tools like RoboForm.

5. Speed up Frequent Tasks by Adding Accelerators to IE9

One of the best and unique features of Internet Explorer 8 and 9 are accelerators.

What are accelerators?

Accelerators are a great way to get things done more quickly! Let’s say you want to translate this site, and then you’d normally have to open up something like Babylon or microsofttranslator.com and enter the website URL there. With accelerators you can do that with just one click. This won’t really speed up the Internet Explorer 9, but it will be speed up the part of getting things done.

The IE-Add-ons gallery is filled with useful accelerators. You will surely find a lot of useful accelerators in Microsoft’s gallery ieaddons.com

Tip: Unfortunately, too many accelerators can also slow down IE9. So, only enable accelerators that you really need.

6. Speed up Internet Explorer 9 by Switching to Google Public DNS

Open DNS is very fast.

Open DNS is a free DNS server that will do all the DNS lookups for you. If your ISP (Internet Service Provider, e.g. AT & T) has a slow DNS server, your DNS lookups will be slow. This in return will result in slow website loading. That’s why Open DNS might help you to speed up your internet connection.

DNS: General Info

But what is DNS and what are DNS lookups? DNS stands for Domain Name System. All domains (web addresses) are linked to IP numbers of so called name servers that translate the domain name request to an IP. Simply put, DNS is like the telephone book of the internet. Your ISP DNS server is basically a large telephone book with many domains and their IP’s, but if that server is slow finding the correct number (IP) will take a bit longer.

Open DNS has servers all over the world to optimize DNS queries and make DNS lookups blazing fast.. It’s a free service that you can rely on. It’s also helps to prevent phishing and has many advantages in general.

Changing DNS Server Windows 7

1. Open control panel then open network & sharing

2. Click on Local Area Connection (hyperlink)

3. Next, click on Properties:

4. Select Internet Protocol Version 4 and click on Properties:

5. At the bottom it says Use the following DNS server address. Enter:

Preferred DNS Server: 208.67.222.222

Alternate DNS Server: 208.67.220.220

Finally.. Flush DNS

Your web browsers have a cache. They are also caching the address of your DNS server. So, in order to actually use the new Open DNS server for faster DNS lookups we have to flush the DNS and get rid of the old entries!

How to do that?

1. Open Command Prompt

2. Enter ipconfig /flushdns