Much has been made about how you can speed up Firefox by allowing concurrent downloads from a server. Did you know that the same thing can be done for Internet Explorer? By default, Explorer only allows a maximum of two files to be downloaded at the same time from any one server. By editing the registry, this can be increased by 16. Though, to be kind to the server, you should probably select a smaller number (6-8) to keep the server from getting totally hammered. Here are the steps to increase this number.

1. Open the registry editor (type regedit in the Start menu for Vista, or regedit in Run for XP).

2. In the left pane of the registry editor, open folders to get to the following section: HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Microsoft -> Windows -> CurrentVersion -> Internet Settings.

3. Right click the right pane and select New -> DWORD Value. Type MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server and give it a value to indicate the maximum number of connections, I use 6.

4. Add another DWORD value using the same process. This time name it MaxConnectionsPerServer and give it the same value you gave to the previous entry.

You'll need to restart Explorer for this change to take effect, but once you do you should notice that pages load faster.