Make internet surfing with any browser faster on broadband

September 5, 2008 · Filed Under Browsers, Google, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, Tips, Tweaks 

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to comp Daily's RSS feed to get more content like this daily.You can get free computer help or share a tip in the forum or by contacting me Thanks for visiting!

Are you wondering how? Well this is a trick that works for many,regardless of the browser.Basically this tweak reserves a fixed amount of memory (from your ram )to your network card so that the browsing speed is improved.The amount of memory that needs to be reserved is very low (a webpage would be lesser than an mb in many cases), and best results have been obtained by reserving 4mb. And again this works best if you are connected with a lan card and not by usb. People have reported that the performance wasnt changed by reserving more memory, so i recommend 4mb for a start. Also some people have said that this tweak didnt work for them, no harm in trying you can always undo this.This worked perfectly for me and i have published my results at the end of this post. Here is how to do it.

Open the device manager . This can be done by right clicking my computer and then selecting properties.In the system properties window that opens, click the hardware tab and then select device manager. Alternatively you can click on start menu, then click on run and open “devmgmt.msc”

    opening device manager
  1. In the device manager window that opens, right click your network card, and select properties
                                             opening properties of network card
  2. Then click on resources tab to find out the IRQ number of your network card.Note this.    
                                            finding out the irq of the network card
  3. Now click start menu, and click on run.In the text feild type “sysedit” and click on run
  4. In the system configuration editor that opens,click on “C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.INI” window and add this line “IRQ[n]=4096″after the line “[386enh]” , where [n] is the irq number of lan card you noted earlier. For example in my case i added “IRQ21=4096″       
    5. adding the irq[n]=4096 line after [386enh]
  5. Click on file and then save, reboot the computer and feel the difference.

The 4096 denotes 4*1024kb=4mb. Its recommended to use this value.Many people have claimed that this method can be applied to harddisk IRQ also to make the loading faster. Alright now let me tell the effect it had on my browsing speed .I tested this on five browsers - IE 7, Firefox 3, Safari 3, Opera 9.5 and Chrome and the website i picked for loading was google and my connection speed is 256Kbps .I tabulated the results below

Browser IE 7 Firefox Opera Safari Chrome
Before applying tweak - time taken for loading 3.734 3.424 3.344 3.406 3.383
After applying tweak - time taken for loading 2.406 2.162 2.156 2.39 1.802

 

As you can see it had a positive impact on my browsing speed , and google chrome was fastest of all! You can read my review on google chrome here. Anyway you can also expirement this tweak with a hardrive,etc.Please let us know how this tweak worked for you in the comments or if you want to get some help regarding this.Also if you liked this and want to recieve more content like this please subscribe to this site’s RSS feed.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments

5 Responses to “Make internet surfing with any browser faster on broadband”

  1. hans on September 26th, 2008 11:46 am

    reveiwing the : Make internet surfing with any browser faster on broadband, i would like to ask how to do that if using a usb modem? if u have the answer or any suggestion, that would be very helpful to me, thanks….

  2. Sachin on September 30th, 2008 2:10 am

    Hi

    Excellent Tip N Tricks Buddy

    It work as a bullet for me and I am happy to promote your tip to many people down the line.

    I had made a little change instead of IRQ[n]=4096 i have put IRQ[n]=8192 and my my it works perfectly as stated by you.

    I am having 1GB of Ram so i increased it.

    I don;t think there is any problem if there is do mail me at sgadgil1765@yahoo.co.in

    One more question

    Can i speed up my machine also in same manner?

    Help me out and more people will use your tip from your website.

    Thankyou buddy

    Sachin

  3. Pranav on September 30th, 2008 6:36 am

    Hi Sachin!
    You can try increasing the IRQ memory allocated to the IDE channels (harddisks), so that reading and writing from hard disk becomes faster.This worked for me too!Try doing the same procedure for the primary and secondary ide channels.

  4. Pranav on September 30th, 2008 6:56 am

    @hans
    Hi
    you have to figure out which universal host controller, your usb modem is connected to by disabling and enabling them in device manager.whenever modem loses its usb link, you’ve found the required usb controller. then you can find out the irq.i am thinking of writing other methods for usb modems too, so keep checking my site :) .see the below pictures

    Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

    Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

    Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

  5. Jacob on October 26th, 2008 10:42 am

    I tried to apply your tweak and my system won’t let me do run ’sysedit’ it says that it is not compatable something about 16 bit ant 32 any help would be appreciated.

Leave a Reply