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Looking for a browser which can be set to send requests one at a time ( and thus not in parallel as normally is the case).

If anyone knows of a browser with this option I'd be very grateful. If not I guess it'll be down to playing with open source.

Why? It relates to testing network traffic drivers. Thanks

Nigel Hoath
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  • Do you need a real browser or a tool that can send http(s) calls one by one? – Niels van Reijmersdal Jul 31 '14 at 09:32
  • Niels I need a functional http(s) browser that can handle a proxy as a minimum. My driver will send http(s) parallel or single threaded but I'd have to engineer the script to get it to rerun (Allow for changing session ids, cookies, viewstates, variables, etc.) and the reason for this is to automate the engineering process. Cheers Nigel. – Nigel Hoath Jul 31 '14 at 11:29

2 Answers2

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Sorry to answer own question but in the hope it might help others.

Couldn't find a single threaded browser that ran on windows.

I read various web based comment on increasing max sessions for browsers on Windows. All involved changing or creating registry entries. [ While I wanted to reduce max sessions, as Sam offered (see answer below), it seemed logical that if max sessions was set to one I would get the single threadedness I required. ]

Exactly what registry changes were required depended on Windows version and Browser version.

Despite trying a wide range of changes with a wide range of browsers I did not ever have success reducing max sessions to one.

However with Windows 7 and IE 11 I could also see no relationship between the registry settings and the number of connections. At one point I had 12 connections open yet the biggest registry entry was 6.

Seems registry settings and behaviour have at best a very hazy relationship. Certainly not one that one could rely on.

We've decided for our purposes to preprocess network traces which is an extra step but c'est la vie.

Cheers all who viewed.

Nigel Hoath
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You can change the max connections per domain for many browsers by adding a dword entry to your registry under 'Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\' DWORD 'MaxConnectionsPerServer'

The value should be however many connections you want to use, in your case it would be 1.

Here's a walkthrough for Chrome (should also work for IE, and not sure about other browsers): http://www.ehow.com/how_12169537_change-number-simultaneous-downloads-chrome.html

Sam Woods
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  • Many thanks Sam. Can't give it a try till tomorrow but that looks good. I'll get back but Cheers – Nigel Hoath Aug 01 '14 at 07:12
  • Sam made the registry changes but captures using Firefox and Chrome both went parallel. I note in the link tutorial it says use a number greater than 5. Obviously most users would want to increase the number but possibly there is a restriction on going low (low as in 1). – Nigel Hoath Aug 01 '14 at 12:26
  • Sam I now notice from the feedback that this has not worked when increasing the number above 5. But I think there may be a solution here. I'll be bac – Nigel Hoath Aug 01 '14 at 12:32
  • Hmm, I have used it to increase the number in the past, I have not tried putting it down to 1. I assumed it would work, but apparently not. – Sam Woods Aug 01 '14 at 16:31