One aspect marked by the evolution from Internet Explorer 7 to Internet Explorer 8 is the boost in the level of concurrent connections permitted by Microsoft's proprietary browser. The Redmond company simply increased the performance of Internet Explorer when it comes down to handling connections involving HTTP 1.0 servers (via broadband). While browsers like Opera and Firefox allow end users to tweak the maximum allowed concurrent connections, Internet Explorer 8 is less flexible in this regard. However, IE8 does allow for up top six concurrent connections from a single host.

“We tested IE8 in the load test, and it works - it opens 6 concurrent connections per host. What we did was created a load test with one web test in it, and one concurrent user. In the browser mix, we put IE7 and ran the load test. Then we changed it to IE8 and ran the test again. At the same time, we were monitoring current connections counter of the Web Service on the IIS box using perfmon. As you can see from the screenshot below, IE7 opened only 2 connections to the server, while IE8 opened 6 connections,” revealed Vitaliy Konev, Performance Engineer Microsoft - ACE Team.

What does this mean for end users? Well, it means that IE8 does not feature the two concurrent connections limit of IE7. But this only given the right context. While IE7 users could only have two simultaneous downloads from the same source, IE8 will be able to go as far as six. Still, this only if a broadband connection and a HTTP 1.0 server are in the mix. For a HTTP 1.1 server and over a narrowband connection, IE8 will, just as IE7, allow for just two simultaneous downloads.

“With Internet Explorer 8, the maximum number of concurrent connections from a single host process connecting via broadband to a single server has been increased to 6. In Internet Explorer 7 and earlier, the maximum number of concurrent connections per host process to a single server via HTTP 1.1 is 2. For HTTP 1.0, the limit is 4, though HTTP 1.1 connections are far more common today. Note that the maximum number of concurrent connections from a single host process connecting via dial-up (with a modem over a telephone line) to a single server remains the same as for Internet Explorer 7 and earlier,” Microsoft revealed.

Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) is available for download here.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2 is available for download here.