By: Sorab Ghaswalla
It’s done. If you have not heard it yet, HTTP/2 is finally drawn up & approved. Which means, to explain it in a nutshell, browsing on the Internet is going to be faster very soon. It’s taken the working group almost 2 years, over 200 design issues, 17 drafts, & 30 implementations before the HTTP/2 & HPACK specifications being approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force’s (IETF) steering group for publication as standards-track RFCs. (The mission of the IETF, a body largely of volunteer, hardware/software engineers, is to make the Internet work better by producing high quality, relevant technical documents that influence the way people design, use, & manage the Internet.)
As it says on its blog, the HTTP Working Group began work on HTTP/2 in 2012 using Google’s SPDY protocol as the starting point. After community feedback, substantial changes to the format of the protocol, its compression scheme, & its mapping to the semantics of the present form of HTTP were made.The result: HTTP 2nd version will help provide faster user experience for browsing, reduce the amount of bandwidth required, & make the use of secure connections easier. Incidentally, HTTP/1.1 was developed in 1999. HTTP is the underlying protocol (method) used to by the World Wide Web in transmitting Web messages & the standardized manner in which browsers & servers need to respond to various commands sent over it.Before Internet users panic & wonder what’s about to hit them, relax. Nothing much is going to change on the front end, except of course, your Net speed. The IET has clarified that the new protocol has been designed such so as to allow a seamless switch between HTTP/1 & HTTP/2, with minimal changes to applications & APIs, while at the same time offering improved performance & better use of network resources.
The Chair of the Working Group Mark Nottingham, while thanking all those who contributed to the project, has posted on his blog that the final version of HTTP/2 was on its way to the RFC Editor, where it will soon be assigned RFC numbers, go through some editorial processes, & then be published. (The RFC Editor maintains the master repository of RFCs as well as RFC metadata, which can be searched Online.)
Here are the benefits of HTTP/2:
1. Faster browser
2. Faster page loads
3. Less disruptions in Net connections
4. Lower loads on networks & servers
Those developers who want to experiment with the new standard can go over to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox to do so.
Graphic Credit: Pixteller. Image is for representational purposes only.
Mozilla outlines Firefox roadmap for HTTP/2
http://venturebeat.com Feb19, 2015
Nine percent of all Firefox release channel HTTP transactions are already happening over HTTP/2.
HTTP/2, the first major change to HTTP in 16 years, has been finalized – The Next Web
http://news.google.com Feb 18, 2015
Today, the next major version of HTTP took a big step toward becoming a reality; it’s been officially finalized and now moves towards being fully standardized. According….
Faster Internet Service With HTTP/2 Might Be On Its Way Thanks To An Updated … – Bustle
http://news.google.com Feb 19, 2015
The default protocol that marks the foundation of surfing the web has just received an update called HTTP/2, which is its biggest update in 16 years. A special….
What is HTTP/2 and is it going to speed up the web? – The Guardian
http://news.google.com Feb 18, 2015
HTTP/2 is the next version of HTTP and is based on Google’s SPDY, which was designed to speed up the loading of web pages and the browsing experience. It is a new standard and …
What Is HTTP/2? – Gizmodo Australia
http://news.google.com Feb 18, 2015
Put simply, HTTP/2 is a very overdue upgrade to Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the basic protocol that handles connections between a web server and your browser. The original development of HTTP happened …
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