Speed Up Load Time of Some Webpages in Firefox

[Scooter]

I've noticed a recent issue where certain websites load very slowly in Firefox. Specifically, Facebook pages were taking up to 10 seconds or more to load. At the bottom of the Firefox window, it read "Looking up www.facebook.com".

I thought this was odd. Why would Firefox spend so long looking up a known address? I suspected a DNS issue.

I found the IP address of Facebook and typed it into the address bar instead and hit enter. Facebook loaded instantly. Yep, DNS issue, but how? Why?

I checked my system and router DNS server addresses. Both showed the addresses I had customized them with, OpenDNS, 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

I checked the status of those DNS servers: running with no problems. What was the holdup? Checked the firewall: no problems.

I began to think of the way IPs are handled. THe most widely adopted protocol is IPv4, with a newer implementation of IPv6 being used by some sites. A system trying to resolve IPv6 addresses translated to IPv4 can stall out. Could IPv6 be at work here?

IPv6 was disabled on my system. I opened Firefox and checked the configuration: sure enough, IPv6 was enabled. I disabled it, and Facebook was back to loading right away.

So here's the fix, for those of you who may be experiencing the same issue with Facebook or other sites:

1) In your address bar, type "about:config". Agree to the humourous warning about voiding your warranty.
2) Find the item named "network.dns.disableIPv6" and right-click on the word "false" on that line.
3) Select the option "Toggle". The word False will change to True.
4) Close Firefox and relaunch it. You may find a difference in load time.

[roseofblack25]

thanks tried it out will see if facebook works faster and I laugh at your "up to ten seconds to load" thing try 20min for facebook to load cause thats how long it normally takes me

[kaela]

i tried it see how it works

[Scooter]

thanks tried it out will see if facebook works faster and I laugh at your "up to ten seconds to load" thing try 20min for facebook to load cause thats how long it normally takes me

Yes, that is frustrating but understandable... you're on dialup, and sometimes FB pages - with all those cute "applications" - can total into the tens of megabytes in size, thanks to all those little animations and javascript addins.

Even with high speed broadband, my browser tends to groan on some people's pages - one person in particular I know has so many damned apps on their profile that I gave up halfway through loading all her crap, and never went back there again.

[Gebraroest]

Yeah I saw a video about this comparing Firefox and Google Chrome, how Google Chrome has WAY faster loading time. But I still enjoy Firefox better but maybe you can try Google chrome?