How to throttle HTTP requests in Firefox?

27
2013-07
  • thkala

    When using the Web, I occasionally stumble on various (rather reasonable) DoS protection features used by the server administrators. Most commonly this happens when using Zotero which tends to mercilessly pound the remote servers, such as Google Scholar.

    Is there a way to setup a Firefox profile, so that the rate of HTTP requests is limited? Perhaps a hidden setting in about:config or a separate add-on?

    I have found some tips for the following approaches, but none matches exactly what I need:

    • Limit the number of concurrent connections in the Firefox settings and disable request pipelining: this does not help at all - if the local network pipe is anything beyond a dial-up line, the user could still hit the DoS restrictions.

    • Limit the rate of HTTP connections using a firewall rule: useless - any modern browser will reuse a connection for multiple requests - and really cumbesome.

    • Limit the bandwidth available to the browser: This one might help a bit, if it is set low enough, but to avoid irritating e.g. Google Scholar, it'd have to be set so low that other problems would appear.

    Is there a more reasonable way that would allow me to rate limit HTTP requests at a level of e.g. 2 requests per minute?

    PS: I use Firefox 6+ on Linux/x86-64.

    • Answers
  • Lazy Badger

    I hope, we think about the same thing

    In about:config find the option that is named network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server and decrease as needed (with my 6 I didn't get any problem yet)


    • Related Question

    networking - Windows Vista HTTP requests stop working
  • Al Everett

    (This seems similar to an issue in "Vista Internet connection stops working until reboot" but has quite a few differences, so I'm posting it separately.)

    I have Windows Vista Home Premium.

    With alarming regularity, any and all http requests simply die. I can't find any rhyme or reason for it. It can happen 20 minutes after I start my browsing session, or two hours.

    My network connection does not go down, and no other protocols seem to be affected. (I can connect to WoW, can use POP and IMAP, DropBox continues to update files, etc.) I can still ping website addresses, but the browser simply refuses to connect.

    More unusually, it kills it for all browsers. If I'm using Firefox and it dies, then start up Chrome, Safari, or IE, none of them can load any pages either. The loading indicator just "spins" forever. AJAX HTTP calls are similarly affected. (Gmail doesn't update while I'm in this state, for instance.) Only a restart has been effective in clearing it.

    I'm connecting through a Linksys router, but none of the other PCs (Win XP and Linux) on my network are experiencing this issue. Only the Windows Vista machine is so affected.

    I'm hanging on for Windows 7, but am afraid that it won't fix the issue. I am religious about keeping the OS and software up-to-date with patches.

    How can I fix this? What should I be looking at?


    • Related Answers
  • ephilip

    I would guess that it's probably your anti-virus software or firewall. As wil said, you should also check your proxy settings. This may be strange, but I've noticed that the StumbleUpon toolbar will make my http requests time out. I try using different browsers, and the http requests still time out. But, when I disable the StumbleUpon toolbar, then there are no more timeouts.

  • William Hilsum

    First things to take a look -

    Firewalls, Anti-virus, Anti-Malware....

    Development tools? Fiddler, or any other proxy server...

    Check your proxy settings in general.

    Personally, I would install Wfetch and see if I get any luck.

    Also, if you have any Virtualisation software, installed do you get the same problems from browsing the internet in them?

    Lastly, go in to safe mode with networking and try again and see if you still have the problem.

  • greyDrifter

    Does everything appear normal on your (wireless) connection details?

    Is your DNS pointing to a real address?

    I've had similar on Win7 that I'm trying to peg down the cause. But I believe that DNS the principle cause. I'm interested for selfish reasons on how this will play out. ... I was able to access sites over port 80 again after I disconnected and reconnected from the network, but I started out with restarts which also worked. Likewise other machines on the network are not affected.