To SolarPowered:
You are gaining only false efficiency by tweaking that parameter for one thing, because the download speed is always determined by the slowest link in the connection from you to the host; this is not always the most direct path, and it is totally beyond your control. The link to your host is not necessarily as fast as your link to your ISP, even, and it will be shared between all those port 80 "connections" to your browser in any case, as well as all the other users, with additional overhead for each one. That is why, after a lot of testing and tuning, the default numbers were chosen: they provide optimal efficiency in most cases and avoid quite a bit of unprofitable overhead.
And for another reasoning error, the ability to over-ride them has existed ever since Netscape 3 and Internet Explorer 3. Early on in the days of those browsers, similar documents went around, and I'm tired of this again and again: for once, in MS's favour, the dratted parameter was stored in the registry so it was difficult to get at, and people stopped doing it.
So there is no sudden deployment of more efficient browsers.
The RFC for HTTP recommends not to overload servers, the same way the wiring codes tell us not to simply stick bigger fuses in when a circuit keeps overloading. Would you plug in a 16A electric heater into a 10A socket and say "Well, they will change all the wiring when I start doing this because necessity is the mother of invention?" Who is "they", in any case, and where are they getting the money from to pay for all these new servers? The software doesn't need changing. It is mostly upgrades to *hardware* needed to support more connections, and that costs a lot of money.
