Resolved Connection speed and page rendering much slower in FF 3.6.13

After installation of the 3.6.13 upgrade, website connection and page rendering speed became significantly slower than in all previous versions. I searched the FF knowledge base and Forum and found this post:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/668695#answer-108852
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After changing settings as described in the post, speed was easily more than doubled.

I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced the slowdown in connection and rendering speed with 3.6.13. And also why, if the settings worked so well for me, they aren't standard in FF?

 

BirdieBob,
you mention 3.6.13. Which version of FF did you use before, if any? In other words this new behavior went on when you installed the present 3.6, and was not there with earlier 3.6.x. The link mentions a pretty miserable speed of less than 60 Kbps. Also, the link mentions download speed, and you mention connection speeds, which are different beasts. I have a cheap cable connection, and connection has not changed, and download speeds start at over 60Kbp, and level off at about 110, in a few seconds.

 

With Westside here...

My 10Mbit/s regularly achieves 1 MByte/s downloads without applying any of the fixes mentioned.

 

Westside & Wildfire:

I honestly don't know the prior version of FF that I was using but it was the last version published via automatric update before 3.6.13. I have been using FF since it's inception and experienced nothing like the slowdowns after updating to 3.6.13. Each handshake with a server in loading a page became a 5-30 second process, often requiring several minutes to finally get the page fully rendered and displayed.

I have Earthlink DSL at a 10Mbit advertised speed. Downloading degraded to 3-4Mbit after 3.6.13 while speeds remained normal under IE8, so I assume it wasn't a network issue. After applying the settings in the post, FF now routinely runs in the 30-40Mbit range, and sometimes higher.

I can't explain why the performance changed after 3.6.13 but the revised settings definitely made a significant difference for me and that's why I wondered if anyone else had run into the same thing.

 

I think that I understand what you are saying. If you had a version of Firefox, from which you got the present 3.6.13, I would say that it must have been 3.6.12, and it was a simple security update. As for advertised speed, I pay no attention to it. I can't tell what is happening at any given time, and it is a maximum speed. I can, only, tell the download speed, and since I have a cheap connection it is no better than about 120 Kbps.
How do you obtain the numbers which you mention?

 

I used several tests, including these:

[SIZE=+1]Internet Connection Download/Upload Speed

[/SIZE][SIZE=+1]Webmonkey Browser Load Time Stopwatch

[/SIZE][SIZE=+1]Web Developers Notes Speed Tests[/SIZE]
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I have seen no difference. For what it is worth, I think SeaMonkey is faster.

>>RSM

 

Since it is impossible to compare one version against the other, unless you had separate installations, and separate but identical profiles, all I can do is to give the numbers that I get. The first link gives straightforward results. I tried it once once. Download speed is 1112 Kbps. Upload speed is 268 Kbps.
I did not get much out the third link. Webmonkey.com gave me load times of the page shown of about 30 sec. the first time, and 20 sec. the next two times.
I tried the same page in Google Chrome, allegedly the fastest. The first try gave me 36 sec. The second try was 190 sec. IE8 took 48 sec. I could not get Seamonkey to load the same page.
Personally, I always thought that Firefox was slowish, but the results tell me something different.

 

The speedtest gives me 9704/484 (from a maximum of 10240/512 for my connection, I can't complain)...

The rendering test took anything from 1.8 - 4.0 secs again I can't see any reason to complain.

The speedtest should not be affected by what browser you are using but agreed rendering could (albeit other factors such as system specs/available resources (CPU/RAM etc) should also be taken into account)

 

I'm using FF 3.6.13 and my connection speeds are as follows:

21,512 Kbps download and 9,131 Kbps upload.

On the second link it took 3.8 seconds to fully load the page.

I can't see how the latest version of FF could be the culprit. There has to be something else going on... maybe with your extensions or themes or anti-virus programs.

 

I've tried the links using Google Chrome and there's no question but that the times were better (not a great improvement but consistently faster):

Download: 23,208 Kbps

Upload: 1000 Kbps

Page load on second link was: 1.98 seconds.

 

I only use 3 add-ons, no themes. Security is Webroot Firewall and Spy Sweeper, along with Norton AV. None of those have changed since before the issue.

Before and during the issue, as well as after modifying the settings for FF, IE ran smoothly without encountering the slowdowns going to the same sites. That makes me believe the issue is FF related.

 

BirdieBob

This may be your issue but I believe one of the questions you were asking was why these settings were not by default,

I think the posts above answers that

As to your other question, All I can say is I have not experienced any slowdown since upgrading to 3.6.13

 

its not standard because not all sites accept pipelining. If you're having problems accessing a site, then I would start with turning off pipelining.

Anyways, if it was me, I would start with changing my dns servers, and see if things improved that way. You can start with OpenDNS <http://www.opendns.com>, or google: <http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns>, or even comodos: <http://www.comodo.com/secure-dns>

 

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and recommendations. I posted because I wanted to see if anyone else had experienced circumstances like mine and to ask why the settings weren't default, given the clear difference they made for me.

It appears the no one had similar conditions with 3.6.13. And if pipelining not being accepted by all sites, that's a plausible answer for not being default.

So I'm going to call this resolved at this point. For me, with no other changes in applications or configuration, and the clear difference the settings made, I remain suspicious of 3.6.13 but can't confirm that. For the very few sites I've encountered that don't handle pipelining, the result is no worse than conditions before the settings were changed.

Thanks again and if anything new develops on this topic going forward, I'll report back here.