Windows® 7 Tweaks: A Comprehensive Guide on Customizing, Increasing Performance, and Securing Microsoft® Windows 7

Chapter 16. Optimizing Your Network

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 on which it is dependent, the web browser and the network that connects you to the Internet.

First, you optimize the speed of both Internet Explorer and Firefox by tweaking the number of active downloads. Then I show you some great utilities that will increase the speed of downloads, followed by tweaks that will speed up your network.

Optimizing Your Web Browser

On my computer, the web browser is the most used application. For society in general, the web browser has become 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 between two and six at a time. The following tweaks will show you how you can ...