1367517 - provide an option in Firefox to set unlimited size for sdd/ram/cpu cores cache for advance users(via configure file or performance ui section)

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement)

Description

[Stephen]

Hear me out without judging and sorry if i overstepped any one's toe's or did something not according to bugzilla etti.

& TL;DR at the bottom

we work in a firm which has 500 pc's with the exact build.
8 cpu with 16 threads AMD paired with 16 gb ram and 512 gb sdd.

we work for our clients who hosts private sites and we provide assistance and bug fixing

Since NETWORK BANDWIDTH is a major factor we try to use as much cache as possible so that we don't create a congestion and bring the network crawling or increase the cost for our clients and our in-house network and sister sites.

But cache is the main issue so please try to understand the point here as i am not well versed in internal browser workings ,

Our clients host images most of which are 80-90 MB each,
Many JavaScript the larges one is 11MB , I am not kidding,
But since we work in accordance to our employer we have to follow their rules.

NOW

Firefox allows 
1gb max SDD/HDD cache,
512mb media cache?
Similar ram cache
Throttles background processes.

These are the issues,

Opening a few images , sites, media files from our clients fills up this instantly,
when revisiting all data is reloaded aging putting pressure on the network which is what we don't want.

Since these cache settings are hard coded we cannot bypass them.
So here is the request from all of us!

*Provide an option to*

1: use entire SDD as cache(512gb is better than 1gb)
2: provide option to use entire disk as media cache.
3: provide option to use all available ram 
4: option to disable throttling,
5: unlimited network/dns/etc cache

option 4 because we open sites with huge JS and the cpu can handle them and we like to switch between them very often so throttling is counter productive and we don't want power-saving here but performance.

I read the recent articles on Mozilla wiki, MDN, Eshan blogs, and newsletters.
You guys want to improve perceived as well as real world performance of the browser mostly in scenarios which cannot be tested in automated environments.

So as far as this ideology goes then if i am correct more power to users who know stuff is good right?


Since these are **hard coded, removing it and adding unlimited should not be very hard but the impact would be epic gain in pefromance**
Since no chunks limits, entries limit, cache/ram/media/cpu limits, the hardware can be used to it's full potential(that why people invested money in those)

From reading all the articles provide by you guys
WE(our firm) thinks that adding an option like -1=unlimited for options 1-5 would help us a lot and improve the performance of the browser,
Firefox already provides an option for performance settings.
Please note this can help other users aswell as sites keep growing in size and so does their media, networks capping connection is also a thing  for users.

Read in a telementary report & chrome blog that big cache is not that effective according to telementary,
but would like to say in real world saving bandwidth costs and saving time not reloading the same resources again is far better trade-off for users who want this, old Opera had this option and it was saving time and cost for everyone.

@eshan i know you are busy this weeks with work week but could you please consider adding this as you stated user feedback is important
to you guys to improve real world performance.

need-informing a few people who "I think" know about the *respective options and how to go about it* in a proper way

**Please , did I say Please keep an open mind and try to put your self in our position**

Don't know what else to fill here so leaving it to you guys to fill up.

Thank you all for wonderful browser and looking forward to making it better.


TL;DR: remove hard coded cache sizes and entries limit for ram/disk/cpu/network/Throttling blocking  and allow an override eg -1=unlimited so that 
users can use the hardware up to it's full potential if they want and weight their importance to saving data or cpu/ram/sdd or power saving/performance.

Comment 1

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Please do not spam people with needinfo. I'll forward your needinfo request to Evan who is working on the performance section of preferences.

Comment 2

[Stephen]

Stated the reason for Need-info above

Real world usage should be considered that's why.

Comment 3

[Michal Novotny [:michal]]

In your case, a caching proxy for all computers would be much better solution than caching hundreds of gigabytes on each machine.

Comment 4

[Stephen]

(In reply to Michal Novotny (:michal) from comment #3)
> In your case, a caching proxy for all computers would be much better
> solution than caching hundreds of gigabytes on each machine.

yes but most machines are isolated for security purposes too, so this should in general improve performance for all users which is the reason for the bug

Comment 5

[Evan Tseng [:evanxd]]

I think Anne might have some ideas about this.

Hi Anne,

What do you think of these cache settings at Comment 0.

Comment 6

[Anne (:annevk)]

So we need to store more than just the HTTP cache. We also have storage (QuotaManager), cookies, permission data. And I think currently storage is fairly independent from the HTTP cache. I think in principle it makes sense to make higher limits for these possible and definitely for storage we want to move to allow up to 70% usage or so of disk space by default. But I don't really know how these intersect at the moment and how we can make that better.