Simple Technique To Tweak The Maximum Simultaneous HTTP Connections Limit To A Web Server
While downloading from the Internet Explorer browser, you might have noticed that it does not allow you to download more than two files at a time with HTTP. However, with HTTP/1.0 you can download a maximum of 4 files at a time. This kind of limitation can be quite inconvenient, especially to download fanatics.
Sometimes it so happens that, even when you have just two active downloads running simultaneously, you are no more able to load web pages or browse the website from the same server. This default behavior is because of the Windows settings which restrict the maximum concurrent connections to a web server through HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1.
However, this behavior generally affects both, browsing the website as well as downloading files using the Internet Explorer browser in which only two simultaneous connections can be established for HTTP/1.1 and four simultaneous connections for HTTP/1.0.
You need to note that this issue is different from security restriction imposed on simultaneous TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) connection attempts in Windows Vista and XP SP2.
The specification (RFC 2068) is responsible for imposing a limit of two connections for the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP/1.1. Incase of HTTP/1.0, the limit of four connections is self-imposed which matches with the standard followed by most of the popular Web browsers.
Nevertheless, you can unlock and change the maximum concurrent connections limit by making changes in the system registry. Just follow the simple steps mentioned below:
1. Go to “Run” option in the Start Menu, type in “regedit” into the run command box that appears and press the “Enter” key to open the Registry Editor.
2. You need to locate the registry key mentioned below:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings
3. Create two DWORD values and name them as follows:
MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server
MaxConnectionsPerServer
4. Fix the value for both these registry entries to the maximum concurrent connection requests to be allowed per HTTP server. Note that the value has to be an integer. For e.g. if you wish to allow 8 concurrent web page loadings or downloads per HTTP server, just set the value data of the registry entries to 8 (Hexadecimal or Decimal).
Incase you wish to allow 10 connections, input 10 (Decimal) or else 000000a (Hexadecimal). The default value for “MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server“and “MaxConnectionsPerServer” are 4 and 2 respectively.
5. Restart the system to make the changes effective. You may also log off and logon again.