Chrome Downloading Vs Firefox Downloading

[Guest Deleted_Account]

I have been using chrome as my primary web browser since it's debut release, ditching IE completely and installing FF as a secondary/backup. Until recently this was all good and I chalked up download speeds to my ISP and not chrome. This changed as I had to move back to Ubuntu (10.10) I am using FF.

This started as I was installing software (google chrome) after the install and noticed my Download speed was about 286KB/s average while before in chrome (and after installing it again) i never broke the 88KB/s mark. This affects me on ALL OS's I have tested this on (Windows XP, 7, Ubuntu 9.10-10.10. Fedora 12-14Beta, BT4, Mac OS X Snow Leopard) and there is no explanation for it. Googling lead to no answers so now I am asking here:

Does anyone else have this problem? And Does anyone know how to fix it?

It's not a big deal anymore as I am once again please by FF and using Version 4 Beta 6 which is a great improvement since the last time I used it (3.0).

[Infiltrator]

I've been using Chrome for a while and have to say, it never let me down. My current internet speed is 1.5Mbits flat and have made many large downloads and never really experienced any performance issues with Chrome, thats one of the reasons I switched over from FF to Chrome.

Chrome seems to load the pages a lot faster than FF and most of the time its very stable. I used to use download accelerator for FF and that used to crash FF all the time. With Chrome everything runs smoothly.

On a side note, have you made any upgrade or modifications to your computer lately?

[Mr-Protocol]

I think it's your computer man. Chrome gives me the same speed as firefox does. It should not matter. Variables that do:

- Internet traffic in your area or home, Time of day

- Server hosting the file you are downloading load

- Etc.

[Infiltrator]

There could be a lot of things, affecting your internet speed.

1. Telephone line

2. Modem (update the firmware or buy a new modem)

3. Faulty Filter Line

4. The computer itself, (try optimizing your TCP Stack)

5. Defrag your compute, if you are using Windows

6. Check if you have sufficient ram

7. Get your ISP to run a test on the line, to determine if there are any issues

8. Try upgrading your internet plan to see if that makes a difference

9. Do you share your internet connection with anyone else (might want to check P2P software is running)

Watch this Hak5 episode, Snubs suggests a tool that can pinpoint root cause of your slow internet speed.

http://www.hak5.org/episodes/episode-726

[VaKo]

Because everything you download is filtered through Googleplex servers for advertising revenue.

[Guest Deleted_Account]

Well it's not my computer as this only effects chrome and ff, opera, etc. All download with hire speeds (and the same speed between them 386KB/s last night). I did run the tools on my windows machine and I am being throttled but down to 390kb/S from what I am supposed to have 1.5 MB. Guessing they changed speeds I was notified of a new plan. How evere 390kb/s over wifi is fine for me. When plugged in I get closer to 1MB even with chrome. so t seems chrome isn't agreeing with my router or something as it only slows down over wifi and nothing else does.

On a side note it gets same speed on other networks so it must be something to do with this. I am guessing it has to do with my router also having a smaller range then normal (only reaches about 60ft won't even hit my living room anymore). But how would this ONLY Effect Chrome no matter what OS I am using?

[digip]

Check to see if Chrome's DNS Caching and Prefetching is somehow getting in the way when you switch between wireless and wired adapters. Might be something to that. If its on, disable it. From things I have read, it slows down connections for the Chrome Browser, but since other browsers don't have that sort of feature, they don't have the same issues. Also I think Chrome purposely does IPV6 DNS lookups on all connections in its initial load, then defaults to IPV4 afterwards. Not sure if that could slow things down or not though.

Edited October 21, 2010 by digip

[Zimmer]

Digip I don't see how dns lookups could slow down a download that much it just has to lookup the one address for the download, though in regular browsing it could.

[digip]

Digip I don't see how dns lookups could slow down a download that much it just has to lookup the one address for the download, though in regular browsing it could.

Because it tries to do ipv6 AAAA lookups first, then when fails, goes back to ipv4 and will continue to do so for all requests(I don't actually have proof of this though). If the router doesn't do ipv6 or have ipv6/6 to 4 on the host, it still tries anyway from what I was reading. Also, its prefetching feature has been touted by many to actually slow things down, although I haven't done any scientific tests to back that up, I'm assuming its hitting google's cache first for copies. I only use Chrome when testing sites I design for my customers. Don't really care for Chrome anyway...

edit:

Another thing I hadn't thought about, is how many connections to a server does Chrome make for requests and downloads, and is there even a setting for this within Chrome. I know in Opera you can edit this to help speed up connections and page loads and also customize the buffers. No sure about FF or how it handles this. One thing I have notices though, and this is with Safari under an XP VM I have it installed on, Safari is severely slower compared to Opera and even Internet Explorer within the VM. It might just be a webkit based issue with downloading files and how it buffers the download.

We should do a download comparison in all the browsers using http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ and http://www.speedtest.net/ then see what the results are. Might not be the best test though, as these servers are hit by lots of users and results will vary based on time of day, day of week, etc, but I would gather its a good baseline to see how each browser does. My guess is they will all be pretty much the same, and the only difference will be in the actual rendering of a page, javascript, css, and its error catching processes for incompatible code/css, etc.

This would make a good segment too, if we could have some sort of browser shootout, but with some real world testing, not just simple speed tests, but some sort of software stress tests to show physical downloads and how the browsers perform on rendering sites, downloading of the same files over both a LAN and the internet, how well they handle under stress, and maybe even testing to see if they are filtering or testing traffic(such as phishing checks, etc slowing things down). I know Opera does site checks, but doesn't seem to slow it down but I've never checked to see if Chrome is doing the google check against its database for safe browsing. Might be slowing it down. (funny, google classified itself as having suspicious activity 6 times within the last 90days: http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnos...site=google.com )

edit:

Interesting results, decided to test this in Opera, FF and Chrome, just to see what if. I ran the test multiple times in each browser, adjusting settings and such, but for the most part, Opera and FF always seemed to come out faster on the downloads than Chrome. This is highly un-scientific, but after a good 8-10 tries in each browser, Chrome seems to be the slowest in the results but only slightly. Surprisingly, DNS Prefetch actually was faster, but not enough to be of any difference really, and I'm not sure it even makes a difference in this sort of test, since I'm on the same site over and over again. I'd say it could be his system and version of Chrome, any plugins or such that could be an issue, or Chrome doing things in the background that would require some wireshark or tcpdump logs to analyze for results and comparisons to the other browsers he is using.

http://www.speedtest.net/

http://www.speedtest.net/

Opera : 19.42Mb/s

FireFox : 17.64Mb/s

Chrome : 16.35Mb/s DNS Prefetch off, 17.62Mb/s DNS Prefetch on

-----------------------------------------

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

Opera : 20.76Mbps

FireFox : 20.52Mbps

Chrome : 20.79Mbps DNS Prefetch off and on almost identical

Edited October 22, 2010 by digip

[Guest Deleted_Account]

Did the test:

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

FF: 2.49MB/s download 0.83MB/s Upload
Chrome (Stable): 90KB/s download  0.81MB/s Upload
Chrome (Dev. Build): 100KB/s 0.74MB/s Upload

speedtest.net

FF: 2.5MB/s
Chrome (Stable): 110KB/s
Chrome (Dev. Build): 100KB/s

REAL WORLD TEST:

FF: 1.5MB/s Download 1MB/s upload (Although for the first time in a while I got 2MB/s on Ethernet).
Chrome (Stable): 88-90KB/s Download .34MB/s Upload
Chrome (Dev. build): 78-83KB/s Download 0.45MB/s Upload

\

All Tests are on WiFi with 100% signal and only about 15 FT away.

[digip]

I guess I should mention, I was using a non-installed portable app of Chrome, v3.0.195.33 from http://portableapps.com/ . Maybe the real build vs the portable apps makes a slight difference, because my speeds between the three were almost identical, although Chrome was slower, only marginally on my machine.

Edited October 22, 2010 by digip

[Infiltrator]

edit:

Another thing I hadn't thought about, is how many connections to a server does Chrome make for requests and downloads, and is there even a setting for this within Chrome. I know in Opera you can edit this to help speed up connections and page loads and also customize the buffers. No sure about FF or how it handles this. One thing I have notices though, and this is with Safari under an XP VM I have it installed on, Safari is severely slower compared to Opera and even Internet Explorer within the VM. It might just be a webkit based issue with downloading files and how it buffers the download.

You can change how many connections FF makes to a server, by entering About:Config in FireFox address bar. In order to increase the outbound connections, you will need to tweak the following lines.

network.http.max-connections = 30

network.http.max-connections-per-server = 15

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy = 8

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server = 6

Now be aware that increasing these values, can have performance issues. I would probably recommend to start from 2 connections and then slow increment by 1 or 2.

[Guest Deleted_Account]

First off sorry about the bump but I wanted to post the solution and the cause of the problem:

It turns out that the download speeds where cause by chrome not liking me using Comodo's DNS servers which I alway opt-in to when I install CIS (Comodo internet Security). I discovered this when I changed it back to my ISP (Shaw Inc.) and google downloads went up to match FF again. Not sure why chrome doesn't like comodo's DNS but it slows it right down.

Now I am not sure why but this next part is kind of weird:

When downloading on windows I get 88-100KB/s now in both browser but when downloading on linux (Fedora 14) I get about 270-400KB/s. I am guessing it is my firewall and/or other security software slowing it down. All though I did read somewhere that Linux can, in some cases, manage QOS and WiFi better then windows can. Not sure if thats true but I love not having to plug in to get full speed now :) Thanks for the help everyone!

[Infiltrator]

First off sorry about the bump but I wanted to post the solution and the cause of the problem:

It turns out that the download speeds where cause by chrome not liking me using Comodo's DNS servers which I alway opt-in to when I install CIS (Comodo internet Security). I discovered this when I changed it back to my ISP (Shaw Inc.) and google downloads went up to match FF again. Not sure why chrome doesn't like comodo's DNS but it slows it right down.

Now I am not sure why but this next part is kind of weird:

When downloading on windows I get 88-100KB/s now in both browser but when downloading on linux (Fedora 14) I get about 270-400KB/s. I am guessing it is my firewall and/or other security software slowing it down. All though I did read somewhere that Linux can, in some cases, manage QOS and WiFi better then windows can. Not sure if thats true but I love not having to plug in to get full speed now :) Thanks for the help everyone!

QOS is only used for prioritizing traffic that demands high bandwidth, like Skype, video conferencing and IP phones. It doesn't necessarily make your connection go faster.

[ParMan]

i use both and i dont really see a different in downloading.

[Guest Deleted_Account]

QOS is only used for prioritizing traffic that demands high bandwidth, like Skype, video conferencing and IP phones. It doesn't necessarily make your connection go faster.

Hmm interesting then I am not sure why I see such a high increase when using linux VS windows 7 it most be something I have running.

[lanosalf]

I know this is an old post, but i have to say that i have the same behavior.

Firefox download files faster than Chrome, at least from Megaupload and Fileserve downloading as a free user(not premium).

This is absurd i know, but i can certify this.

I use to be a firefox user, but then when i change my computer some problems arise with 2D rendering in firefox with my ati car in windows xp, so firefox was working really bad, apparently not a direct fault of firefox people, but.... nevertheless...

So i start using Chrome, that doesn't have this problems in rendering, so with my hardware was indeed far more fast than firefox.

At the beginning i get the sensation that firefox download files faster than chrome (beside the inherent problems in 2D rendering that has nothing to do here).

But as you all say here that is not possible, what it matters is the server where i download and my internet connection itself, so i didn't pay much attention to the issue.

But now, i can certify, because i did lot of test that firefox is downloading files faster than chrome from Megaupload and Fileserve, at least.

It can't be fortuitous, i have made many test.

With megaupload i get prom 120 kb/s in chrome and in a minute later in firefox with the same file, the same server, the same connection i get 280 kb/s.

With Filserve i get prom 110 kb/s in chrome and in a minute later in firefox with the same file, the same server, different ip (i have to re-connect to change my ip to download another file in filserve as free user) i get 320 kb/s.

Various test similar result.

My internet connection is 3MBs(375kb/s)

This is very strange indeed, but i have been thinking, for example in TCP connections you have many option to configure in a connection, such as size of packets, the tcp version itself=2 or 3 and many more, some have to do with packets verification which can lead to bad performance if the connection is okay and you keep verifying with nonsense packets, for example. This options need to be permitted in the server and then you can set them or not in the client(in this case firefox or chrome)

I think that, although is a little absurd at first thought, it is not so ridiculous to think that in the same sever with all the same, different browsers(eventually with different set options) can download at different speeds.

But i have to repeat, beside the possible explanation, Firefox is downloading files way faster than chrome from this servers and others(with this "others" i didn't really made lot of tests but.... i can tell).

Also, i need to say, that also in many other sites i can't see a significant difference.

What do you think? I think you should try by yourself, to discard i'm going crazy jaja!!

[lanosalf]

I know this is an old post, but i have to say that i have the same behavior.

Firefox download files faster than Chrome, at least from Megaupload and Fileserve downloading as a free user(not premium).

This is absurd i know, but i can certify this.

I use to be a firefox user, but then when i change my computer some problems arise with 2D rendering in firefox with my ati car in windows xp, so firefox was working really bad, apparently not a direct fault of firefox people, but.... nevertheless...

So i start using Chrome, that doesn't have this problems in rendering, so with my hardware was indeed far more fast than firefox.

At the beginning i get the sensation that firefox download files faster than chrome (beside the inherent problems in 2D rendering that has nothing to do here).

But as you all say here that is not possible, what it matters is the server where i download and my internet connection itself, so i didn't pay much attention to the issue.

But now, i can certify, because i did lot of test that firefox is downloading files faster than chrome from Megaupload and Fileserve, at least.

It can't be fortuitous, i have made many test.

With megaupload i get prom 120 kb/s in chrome and in a minute later in firefox with the same file, the same server, the same connection i get 280 kb/s.

With Filserve i get prom 110 kb/s in chrome and in a minute later in firefox with the same file, the same server, different ip (i have to re-connect to change my ip to download another file in filserve as free user) i get 320 kb/s.

Various test similar result.

My internet connection is 3MBs(375kb/s)

This is very strange indeed, but i have been thinking, for example in TCP connections you have many option to configure in a connection, such as size of packets, the tcp version itself=2 or 3 and many more, some have to do with packets verification which can lead to bad performance if the connection is okay and you keep verifying with nonsense packets, for example. This options need to be permitted in the server and then you can set them or not in the client(in this case firefox or chrome)

I think that, although is a little absurd at first thought, it is not so ridiculous to think that in the same sever with all the same, different browsers(eventually with different set options) can download at different speeds.

But i have to repeat, beside the possible explanation, Firefox is downloading files way faster than chrome from this servers and others(with this "others" i didn't really made lot of tests but.... i can tell).

Also, i need to say, that also in many other sites i can't see a significant difference.

What do you think? I think you should try by yourself, to discard i'm going crazy jaja!!