Moving up to HTTP/2

HTTP is the protocol on which the Web is built. It’s the way that browsers send requests to a server and get back content. CERN and Tim Berners-Lee created it in 1989, when the Internet carried pages that were very different from today’s Web. A page was basically text, perhaps with a few images. Connection speeds were usually measured in kilobits per second. Today’s Web pages are far more complex, with images, videos, scripts, and stylesheets, often from many different servers. Connections are vastly faster. What was good enough for the simple pages of the nineties is inefficient for today’s needs.

HTTP/2, the first update since the 20th century, became an IETF standard in 2015. It was an outgrowth of SPDY, a protocol which Google developed to improve HTTP performance. SPDY is now considered obsolete.

HTTP/2 changes the way requests travel so that loading a page requires fewer connections, more information can fit in fewer bytes, and more data can be sent in parallel. It improves communication without affecting the content of Web pages.

Major Web browsers and servers support it. The Apache, Nginx, and IIS servers all accept HTTP/2 connections. The latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer (on Windows 10), and Edge can use it with a compatible server. For the most part, browsers and servers make it available only for secure (HTTPS) connections.

Much more about Compatibility, Efficiency and Security is in the full post: read more