🚀 go-pugleaf

> One of my common needs is to download several data files from a web 
> page.  Using MSIE 6 I seem to be limited to selecting one file at a 
> time.  This is a bit of a nuisance as it requires interrupting other 
> work to go back to the page to select the next in line, etc etc.


Internet Explorer limits the number of concurrent sessions to a web 
server, to comply with the HTTP 1.1 Specification (RFC 2068) ...

   9.1.2)
   <snip>
   Clients that use persistent connections SHOULD limit the number of
   simultaneous connections that they maintain to a given server. A
   single-user client SHOULD maintain AT MOST 2 connections with any
   server or proxy.
   (from http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2068/rfc2068)

This means you can download at most two files at a time, when using IE.

Some other browsers allow you to have more concurrent sessions; however 
these browsers are devaiting from W3C and RFC standards.

There are two main ways you can work around this:

1) use a client-side download manager. The download manager (at least, 
good ones) will serialise the file requests automatically for you, so 
that while you're still only downloading max 2 files at a time, it 
remembers what files you want and sends further requests as sessions 
become available. This is the most "correct" way to solve the problem.

There are a number of commercial, shareware and free download managers, 
out there on the web.

2) If you don't mind being a hog, you can increase the number of 
simultaneous HTTP sessions that Internet Explorer will provide. You can 
do this by editing the registry. The steps are described in Knowledgebase 
article 183110:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;183110


There might be other reasons to consider using an alternative browser to 
Internet Explorer, but the download limit is not one of them! ;-)

Hope it helps,
Andrew