connection

network.http.keep-alive. (Boolean) Setting this to true enables the use of persistent connections. This can
provide more efficient connections with legacy servers as it streamlines the process, e.g. fewer TCP
connections/packets and pipelining support. In the event of problems arising with legacy servers set this to false.
HTTP/1.1 supports persistent connections by default.
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server. (Integer) The value entered here determines that
maximum number of persistent connections to a server, with valid values being 1 – 255, the default being 2 as
recommended in the HTTP/1.1 specification.
network.http.proxy.keep-alive. (Boolean) Setting this to true enables the use of persistent connections over
proxy servers. This can provide more efficient connections with legacy servers as it streamlines the process, e.g.
fewer TCP connections/packets and pipelining support. In the event of problems arising with legacy servers set this
to false. HTTP/1.1 supports persistent connections by default.
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy. (Integer) The value entered here determines that
maximum number of persistent connections to a proxy server, with valid values being 1 – 255, the default being 4
as recommended in the HTTP/1.1 specification.
network.http.pipelining. (Boolean) HTTP/1.1 pipelining is a feature that allows multiple HTTP requests to be
issued simultaneously. Without pipelining, HTTP requests are issued sequentially, with each further request not
being issued until the previous has been completed. While this may seem like a more optimal approach, it’s not
without its detractors. Firefox also contains an internal listing of servers that don’t support pipelining and disables it
for those to avoid problems. As such, you might find some experimentation worthwhile with this feature rather than
just assuming it’s always beneficial. As stated on W3C’s Network Performance Effects of HTTP/1.1, CSS1, and
PNG:
HTTP/1.1 implemented with pipelining outperformed HTTP/1.0, even when the HTTP/1.0 implementation uses
multiple connections in parallel, under all circumstances tested. In terms of packets transmitted, the savings are
typically at least a factor of 2, and often much more, for our tests. Elapsed time improvement is less dramatic, but
significant.
Set this to true to enable pipelining, false to disable. Further information can be found at Mozilla.org’s Pipelining
FAQ.
network.http.proxy.pipelining. (Boolean) This feature performs exactly as per the above (true to enable, false to
disable), albeit it applies to connections over a proxy. As before, this is a feature you may want to experiment with
to determine its benefits, if any.