Have proxy not count as a "server" in connections setting

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1. March 2006, 21:03:44

bvm42

Posts: 97

Have proxy not count as a "server" in connections setting

Opera's network preferences include "max connections to a server" and "max total connections". I also run a local proxy (Proxomitron). Unfortunately, Opera treats the proxy as one server when counting connections, so it never opens more than 8 connections to anyone (if the first preference is set to its default 8). That means if I'm loading an image-heavy page, all 8 connections are quickly consumed, and no other pages from other servers can load at the same time, defeating Opera's great feature of being able to load a bunch of pages in the background.

So I would like a way of telling Opera that my proxy should be considered transparent, so that the "max connections to a server" doesn't count it, but rather the ultimate destination. I don't especially care what the mechanism is; possibilities include

* no user visible setting, just never count localhost or 127.0.0.1 as a server when counting "max connections to a server"

* an additional preference checkbox "don't count my proxy in server count"

* a list of hosts to exclude from the "max connections to a server", much as you already have a list of hosts for "do not use proxy on"

The last seems most general, and would allow you to specify particular other hosts (perhaps a local network server) that you know have tremendous capacity.

[And don't suggest the workaround of raising my max connections to a server setting. That's wrong, on two counts: (a) that lets me swamp a server, and (b) if I'm loading an image-heavy page from a server that will accept that many connections, it will consume the max, feed them slowly, and thus still lock out my other pages from loading.]

2. March 2006, 04:16:25

shogunu

Antiterrorist

Posts: 437

Can't you increase the number of connections?

Edit:
Sorry, i didn't read it till the end

[And don't suggest the workaround of raising my max connections to a server setting. That's wrong, on two counts: (a) that lets me swamp a server, and (b) if I'm loading an image-heavy page from a server that will accept that many connections, it will consume the max, feed them slowly, and thus still lock out my other pages from loading.]


+1

2. March 2006, 08:10:05

NoobSaibot

Remember

Posts: 1443

+1
gentoo (~amd64 | ~x86) | opera 10 | KDE 4

3. March 2006, 12:23:02

bexs

Posts: 71

* A setting in preferences like in FF to specify the connections to a proxy

+1

4. March 2006, 18:02:44

Krake

Posts: 2371

+1
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.

4. March 2006, 18:12:04

offcu

offchu

Posts: 760

+1
yes OFFblog yes
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Opera 12.10.1620.x64 HWA/WebGL off - Windows 7 Ult. x64 SP1

25. March 2006, 12:59:02

bexs

Posts: 71

Still no special treatment for "localhost" and still no option for proxies in #8321 sad

26. March 2006, 13:18:25

Jochen

Posts: 60

+10

This wish was spoken out several times before in the wishlist. Hope Opera changes this sensless behavior soon and treats proxies transparent after all.

27. March 2006, 15:40:28

sacharja

Posts: 666

This wish was spoken out several times before in the wishlist.


Viva la revolucion! Let´s see how FF 2.0 is going to be.

27. March 2006, 19:04:21

NoobSaibot

Remember

Posts: 1443

like opera 2 years ago wink
gentoo (~amd64 | ~x86) | opera 10 | KDE 4

5. April 2006, 16:44:28

bexs

Posts: 71

Have found some new settings in the actual mid-weekly: "No Proxy Servers Check" and "Reduce Max Persistent HTTP Connections", but it has no effect here.

30. April 2006, 12:24:50

porneL

79% geek, 47% nerd

Posts: 2633

+10000

I've been writing my own proxy server and ran into same problem - using proxy severly degrades performance of Opera. Opera opens only few connections to proxy, so proxy can't use it's own smart scheduling and queueing.

30. April 2006, 14:58:55

serious

Lab mouse and likes it!

Posts: 5297

+1, although I don't use a proxy. but maybe I will in the future ... and anyway, it sounds more logical the way you suggested it
All my posts only represent my own opinions.
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17. June 2006, 10:04:41

deadHarlequin

Banned user

There are rumors out about releasing v.9 at the end of the month, and things like that aren t yet fixed.

I love you, but wake up!!!@#$@#$
Give Opera users an open bugtracking system!

16. March 2009, 16:32:40

devilbil

Posts: 2

Yes I'v heard abt it too v.9.
pls guys, if other one heard of it, writhe donwn pls. in that way we can suggest if it's probably true or false !

18. March 2009, 16:41:43

jreynav

Iphen

Posts: 510

+1 headbang.
«OPERAndo»

7. May 2009, 15:10:39 (edited)

sacharja

Posts: 666

OK, so I hope you all have subscribed to this topic. I found a solution:

ProxyFirewall

This program is designed to force all programs that offer no proxy support to use one. By the way it's a real firewall, you're notified if a program wants to connect to the internet. It shows a dialog where you can choose to allow all future connections bypassing the proxy, through the proxy or to deny all connection attempts of the program.

Setup:
- install and open ProxyFirewall
- select "Open Proxies" and add you're local proxy server (as you would enter it in Opera)
- disable the proxy server in Opera (e.g. deselect Opera->Tools->Enable Proxy servers)
- adjust the "Max connections to a server" in Opera to your needs (Preferences->Advanced->Network)

I tested it on a few sites and my Proxomitron is working like a charm. Even HTTPS sites are no problem. I decreased my "Max connections to a server" to 8 and I realised that surfing is subjectively faster than the previous setting to 32. I also don't get the error that some sites don't display all images because of too many connections.

The disadvantage is that ProxyFirewall is not open source. I'm looking for an open source alternative for windows now. Also PF is still beta. If you want to minize it you can configure it as a service.

So what do you think? Did it work for you?

Rejoyed too soon sad ProxyFirewall just connects as HTTPS like ProxyCap. Enabling SSL filtering in Proxomitron results in an empty page in Opera.

25. May 2009, 01:54:57

Chimak Q

Posts: 6

I've spent a fair amount of time researching this issue and have found that using a combination of Privoxy and Polipo is the answer. I point Opera at Privoxy and get Privoxy to forward requests to Polipo which has options to set the number of connections per server.

In Opera I set the 'Max connections to a server' and 'Max total connections' to 64 so that there are at most this many going between Opera and Privoxy and also between Privoxy and Polipo. Polipo manages these 64 connections and limits the number per server (ie between Polipo and each server) to whatever you specify under the variables serverSlots, serverMaxSlots and serverSlots1. I also turn off Opera's memory cache and use Polipo's instead smile

Bear in mind that Opera and other browsers treat persistent (HTTP 1.1) and non-persistent (HTTP 1.0) connections differently and recently Firefox and IE have upped their defaults in this respect. They both use 6 persisent connections and Firefox now uses 15 non-persisent.

5. June 2009, 20:41:39

Chimak Q

Posts: 6

I now realise that using Polipo's cache instead of Opera's is not such a good idea because when it was accessed it had to pass through Privoxy and consequently get filtered. Also note that actually HTTP 1.0 connections can be persistent, unlike what I said above.

Anyway, I've put together a fix which employs Polipo for anyone who has this issue with proxies and connections, it will save people the trouble of setting up and configuring Polipo competely afresh. I'm sure this works because of my experience of accidentally misconfiguring Privoxy to not use Polipo, ie I was effectively just using Privoxy on its own. When I realised my error and then corrected everything so that Polipo was actually used, my surfing speed improved enormously with fewer delays, fewer broken images and less hanging etc.

I believe that the behaviour as described in this topic is the fault of the proxy rather that Opera. See my blog for further details http://my.opera.com/Chimak%20Q/blog/2009/06/05/proxy-connections-limitation

Forums » Opera for Windows/Mac/Linux » Desktop wish-list