MarkB_MI
Well-known Member
- Location
- Motown USA
I came across this info yesterday of use to anyone who is using a later version of Firefox.
It turns out that newer versions of Firefox do something called "speculative connections". All you have to do is hover your mouse pointer over a link and Firefox will open a connection to that site. You don't have to click on a link. So if you're like me and move your mouse around the page as your browsing, you'll open up a bunch of links to sites you don't intend to visit. That can generate a lot of network traffic and computer activity, while it gives sites that track browsing activity a lot more info to work with.
It's fairly easy to turn off this behavior. The information below is from the Firefox support site:
In the Location bar, type about:config and press Enter.
The about:config "This might void your warranty!" warning page may appear. Click I'll be careful, I promise! to continue to the about:config page.
In the about:config page, search for the preference network.http.speculative-parallel-limit.
Observe the Value column of the network.http.speculative-parallel-limit row.
If it is set to 0 then do nothing.
If it is set to a different value, double-click on it to set it to 0.
I typically have several tabs open when I browse, and I've noticed a lot of activity on my router after I've been browsing for a while. I've also noted a ridiculous number of TCP connections when I run the (Linux) "netstat -t" command, and those connections close only when I close Firefox. Since I changed the "network.http.speculative-parallel-limit" setting last night, I've noticed a significant reduction in Firefox network activity. Highly recommended.
Turning off speculative connections in Firefox
It turns out that newer versions of Firefox do something called "speculative connections". All you have to do is hover your mouse pointer over a link and Firefox will open a connection to that site. You don't have to click on a link. So if you're like me and move your mouse around the page as your browsing, you'll open up a bunch of links to sites you don't intend to visit. That can generate a lot of network traffic and computer activity, while it gives sites that track browsing activity a lot more info to work with.
It's fairly easy to turn off this behavior. The information below is from the Firefox support site:
In the Location bar, type about:config and press Enter.
The about:config "This might void your warranty!" warning page may appear. Click I'll be careful, I promise! to continue to the about:config page.
In the about:config page, search for the preference network.http.speculative-parallel-limit.
Observe the Value column of the network.http.speculative-parallel-limit row.
If it is set to 0 then do nothing.
If it is set to a different value, double-click on it to set it to 0.
I typically have several tabs open when I browse, and I've noticed a lot of activity on my router after I've been browsing for a while. I've also noted a ridiculous number of TCP connections when I run the (Linux) "netstat -t" command, and those connections close only when I close Firefox. Since I changed the "network.http.speculative-parallel-limit" setting last night, I've noticed a significant reduction in Firefox network activity. Highly recommended.
Turning off speculative connections in Firefox