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How do I speed up Internet browsing? I’m using firefox to browse the Net through BSNL broadband connection. My system is a p4 machine.

The Internet browsing speed mainly depends on the broadband connection speed (bandwidth) and other factors such as your system configuration and performance.

The higher the broadband bandwidth, faster the browsing speed. It is a compromise between an individual’s bandwidth requirement and affordability to pay for bandwidth charges.

To avoid bottlenecks on the system configuration side, it may be better to have at least a P4 system with 512MB RAM for Windows XP.

The next important factor that affects Internet speed is your system performance. Even if you have the latest machine and higher bandwidth, you may observe very low browsing speed due to poor system maintenance. Here are some tips to improve system performance that, in turn, improves browsing speed.

Regularly clean your temp, temporary internet files, history, etc. CCleaner (Size 2.62 MB) is a usefulfreeware tool that deletes all temp files in a single click. You can download this from http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

The following three points are a must for painless browsing. Windows updates are important, so please make sure you have enabled “Automatic updates”. To check this, click Start – Settings – Control Panel - Automatic updates – double-click and make sure you have enabled “Automatic (recommended).

The next is your Anti-virus Product. Make sure you have the latest virus definition files and Auto-protect is enabled. Even though you might have updated with latest virus definition files, your anti-virus product may fail to catch most viruses if it does not have windows updates.

The next thing is Anti-spyware protection. Nowadays, most Anti-virus products have in-built Anti-spyware protection. If your Anti-virus product does not have Anti-spyware protection, you can install an Anti-spyware application.

Ad-Aware 2007 Free (Size 19 MB) is an Anti-spyware application and can be downloaded from http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-2007/3000-8022_4-10045910.html. So regularly check that “Automatic updates” and “Windows Firewall” are turned ‘On’ and make sure you have the latest definition files of both your Anti-virus Product and Anti-spyware Product.

To download files faster, you can use a download accelerator. Download Accelerator Plus 8.6 (DAP) (size 8.13 MB) is a popular free program that can be downloaded from http://www.tucows.com/preview/403978

We can also optimise the Internet/Modem settings for faster surfing. TZ Connection booster (size 4.1 MB) is a free Internet connection accelerator application. It is a wizard-based application, detects your OS and indicates the recommended values and settings for your system. You can adjust settings such as MTU, MSS, RWIN, TTL, etc. You can download TZ Connection booster from http://www.trackzapper.com/booster.html

You can try the latest Firefox 3 Internet browser, which is faster than its predecessor. Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 (size 7.5 MB) can be downloaded from http://www.filehippo.com/download_firefox/3967/

Solution by M. Sampath

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