Firefox pre-fetching pages, wasting bandwidth

[LordFerret]

This came to my attention this morning. Worth a read, and the tweak (for some of you).

[h=1]Firefox stealthily loads webpages when you hover over links -- here's how to stop it[/h]

[sal_vager]

I wonder how true this is, as I just held my pointer on that link and nothing happened, when I clicked it Firefox loaded the page normally, displaying more elements of the page as each loaded.

Makes me thing the guy has messed with his settings and forgotten, as I have firefox on all defaults here.

[moogoob]

I have infinite data on home wifi. But interesting find nonetheless!

[LordFerret]

I wonder how true this is, as I just held my pointer on that link and nothing happened, when I clicked it Firefox loaded the page normally, displaying more elements of the page as each loaded.

Makes me thing the guy has messed with his settings and forgotten, as I have firefox on all defaults here.

It's true. More on it from Mozilla itself here.

[sal_vager]

I guess I just never noticed.

Prefetching

Link prefetching

Firefox will prefetch certain links if any of the websites you are viewing uses the special prefetch-link tag. For more information, please see the Link Prefetching FAQ. To disable Link prefetching:

In the Location bar, type about:config and press Enter.

The about:config "This might void your warranty!" warning page may appear. Click I'll be careful, I promise! to continue to the about:config page.

In the about:config page, search for the preference network.prefetch-next.

Observe the Value column of the network.prefetch-next row.

If it is set to false then do nothing.

If it is set to true, double-click on it to set it to false.

DNS prefetching

In order to reduce latency, Firefox will proactively perform domain name resolution on links that the user may choose to follow as well as URLs for items referenced by elements in a web page. For more information, please see the DNS Prefetching blog post. To disable DNS prefetching:

In the Location bar, type about:config and press Enter.

The about:config "This might void your warranty!" warning page may appear. Click I'll be careful, I promise! to continue to the about:config page.

In the about:config page, search for the preference network.dns.disablePrefetch.

Observe the Value column of the network.dns.disablePrefetch row.

If it is set to true then do nothing.

If it is set to false, double-click on it to set it to true.

Speculative pre-connections

To improve the loading speed, Firefox will open predictive connections to sites when the user hovers their mouse over thumbnails on the New Tab Page or the user starts to search in the Search Bar, or in the search field on the Home or the New Tab Page. In case the user follows through with the action, the page can begin loading faster since some of the work was already started in advance. To disable this feature:

In the Location bar, type about:config and press Enter.

The about:config "This might void your warranty!" warning page may appear. Click I'll be careful, I promise! to continue to the about:config page.

In the about:config page, search for the preference network.http.speculative-parallel-limit.

Observe the Value column of the network.http.speculative-parallel-limit row.

If it is set to 0 then do nothing.

If it is set to a different value, double-click on it to set it to 0.

Add-on list prefetching

Each time the Add-ons manager is opened, Firefox prefetches a list of add-ons to improve responsiveness of the Get Add-ons pane. This connection is not made if the add-ons manager is not opened.

[Shpaget]

Does it matter on home networks any more?

Even I, with possible the crappiest connection in a modern world, have unlimited data.

It might matter on mobile devices, though.

[SomeGuy12]

Does it matter on home networks any more?

Even I, with possible the crappiest connection in a modern world, have unlimited data.

It might matter on mobile devices, though.

Actually, a few years ago, the major USA home network ISPs (AT&T, Comcast) instituted monthly bandwidth limits of around 150-250 gigabytes a month. It didn't escape anyone's notice that both these companies offer TV service, and the television service, which consumes digital bandwidth from essentially the same pool as internet bandwidth, is not limited, but if you had Hulu or Netflix TV service, the viewings would count against the cap. I think it's unmistakably an abuse of monopoly power and a perfect example why internet service ultimately must be regulated like a utility, the same as water or electricity. TLDR, internet is now an essential service just as important as having electricity, and these data caps are not rooted in actual ISP costs - it would be like the power company selling you the first 1000 kilowatt hours for 10 cents each, then charging $1/kwh for the next 100. Totally arbitrary and in no way related to the production of energy.

Anyways, prefetching webpages won't consume enough bandwidth to matter, but binge watching Netflix 4k shows might...

[LordFerret]

It's not so much that it's wasting bandwidth (although it is, depending on how you view it), but it's the time and resources spent loading those pages background - it's chewing up some of the available bandwidth which interferes with the content I sought for to load. To me, that is a waste and unnecessary.