Microsoft has made sure that Internet Explorer follows Internet standards by allowing you and your browser to download only two files at a time from any server. If you visit a web page with a lot of images and required files, such as CSS styles and JavaScript, you can easily end up with a scenario where your web browser has to make more than 40 requests to the web server to download all the files and then assemble the web page.
Requesting only two of these 40 files at a time is going to be a lot slower than downloading, say, 10 of them at a time.
By tweaking hidden registry values, you can direct Internet Explorer to break Internet standards and download more than just two files at a time. Modifying this setting is simple to do, but be careful; the standards police will be after you.
Follow these steps to speed up IE:
Click the Start - Run (Win key + r) button, type regedit in the Run box, and then press Enter.
- After Registry Editor loads, navigate through
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings
- Right-click in an open space and create a new DWORD key
- Type MaxConnectionsPerServer as the name of the new DWORD key
- Right-click this key and select Modify
- Set the base to Decimal and enter a value greater than 2
- I like to use 15 as my value here. Press OK when you are done
- Create a new DWORD key and type MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server as the name
- Right-click this key and select Modify
- Set the base to Decimal and enter the new value
- Use the same value as used in step 6
- Click OK when you are finished
- Exit Registry Editor and reboot your computer.
After your computer has rebooted, your new Internet Explorer settings are active. If you ever feel like undoing this tweak, just go back into the Registry and delete the MaxConnectionsPerServer and MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server keys that you created and reboot.