Do modern browsers still limit parallel downloads?

Question

In this Yahoo article from 2007, the authors argue that static assets should be split across different hostnames because browsers follow a suggestion from the HTTP/1.1 spec to limit parallel downloads to two per hostname.

My question is, do modern browsers still follow this limit? Using firebug, I noticed that my browser is downloading many more than 2 files in parallel.

Answer 1

Microsoft till IE 7 is limited to two IE 8 and 9 to six. Firefox is limited to six. There is a fix out from ms to modify all to ten: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282402

you can asume that all modern browsers have a default limit of six

Update

Here's a good source for comparing actual browser and their MaxConnextions

Answer 2

Yes, there is still a limit. With Firefox, you can go to about:config and look at the value of network.http.max-connections and network.http.max-connections-per-server.