4 ms·

Exactly what I was wondeirng. Can one really speak of a need for HTTP2 rather than a yearning desire, at most?

coldtea 10y ago
Yes, anybody who runs a large site and gets far better performance out of it for the majority by now of clients who support it.
- omginternets 10y ago
  I'm replying to your post, specifically, but the other comments seem to be making the same point: HTTP2 confers a performance advantage. So I repeat my question: is this speed advantage stricto-sensu necessary? Why can't one "just" spin up a few more EC2 instances until this is fixed? Is there a case in which HTTP2 is necessary, and HTTP1 just won't cut it? I think that's the sense of the original question, and I think it's a valid question when talking about hacking one's way around bugs that are going to get fixed anyway. I'm open to being wrong about this, but I'm surprised at the resistance to this question.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    The perf advantage is in user loading times. HTTP1 won't cut it, and no amount of hardware on the server will, either. Just adding "SPDY" to nginx on some customer sites was enough to reduce load times by double digit %. (10-30 IIRC) I think SPDY might be a workaround for a bit; it's still supported this year right?
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >I think SPDY might be a workaround for a bit; it's still supported this year right? No, Nginx dropped it (they only offer HTTP2 since 1.9.5) and Chrome dropped it from the client too this year IIRC.
okket 10y ago
HTTP/2 is ~10% https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ce-http2/all/all https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ce-http2/all/all HTTP/2 is growing faster than IPv6 https://w3techs.com/technologies/comparison/ce-http2,ce-ipv6 https://w3techs.com/technologies/comparison/ce-http2,ce-ipv6
- daenney 10y ago
  I'm not really sure that kind of comparison makes much sense. HTTP is a layer 7 protocol, IPv6 is layer 3. Rolling out a layer 3 change is an entirely different thing and requires not just the two parties using it to be adapted, but everything and everyone in between. That plus a general lack of a positive business case for v6 has meant tremendously slow adoption. HTTP/2 support on the other hand has been quickly added to major browsers and with a number of big players like Google and social media providers supporting it those numbers would rise much more quickly. Cloudflare and similar providers would skew those metrics too since they can accept the connection over HTTP/2 from your client but still talk 1.X to the backends.
leesalminen 10y ago
I saw a nice performance boost on my webapp and it was basically "free".
matt4077 10y ago
There are quite a few studies that show that revenue drops proportional with performance, i. e. if people have to wait 4seconds instead of two, you're leaving half your revenue on the table.

Yes, anybody who runs a large site and gets far better performance out of it for the majority by now of clients who support it.

omginternets 10y ago
I'm replying to your post, specifically, but the other comments seem to be making the same point: HTTP2 confers a performance advantage. So I repeat my question: is this speed advantage stricto-sensu necessary? Why can't one "just" spin up a few more EC2 instances until this is fixed? Is there a case in which HTTP2 is necessary, and HTTP1 just won't cut it? I think that's the sense of the original question, and I think it's a valid question when talking about hacking one's way around bugs that are going to get fixed anyway. I'm open to being wrong about this, but I'm surprised at the resistance to this question.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  The perf advantage is in user loading times. HTTP1 won't cut it, and no amount of hardware on the server will, either. Just adding "SPDY" to nginx on some customer sites was enough to reduce load times by double digit %. (10-30 IIRC) I think SPDY might be a workaround for a bit; it's still supported this year right?
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >I think SPDY might be a workaround for a bit; it's still supported this year right? No, Nginx dropped it (they only offer HTTP2 since 1.9.5) and Chrome dropped it from the client too this year IIRC.

okket 10y ago

HTTP/2 is ~10% https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ce-http2/all/all https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ce-http2/all/all HTTP/2 is growing faster than IPv6 https://w3techs.com/technologies/comparison/ce-http2,ce-ipv6 https://w3techs.com/technologies/comparison/ce-http2,ce-ipv6

daenney 10y ago
I'm not really sure that kind of comparison makes much sense. HTTP is a layer 7 protocol, IPv6 is layer 3. Rolling out a layer 3 change is an entirely different thing and requires not just the two parties using it to be adapted, but everything and everyone in between. That plus a general lack of a positive business case for v6 has meant tremendously slow adoption. HTTP/2 support on the other hand has been quickly added to major browsers and with a number of big players like Google and social media providers supporting it those numbers would rise much more quickly. Cloudflare and similar providers would skew those metrics too since they can accept the connection over HTTP/2 from your client but still talk 1.X to the backends.

leesalminen 10y ago

I saw a nice performance boost on my webapp and it was basically "free".

matt4077 10y ago

There are quite a few studies that show that revenue drops proportional with performance, i. e. if people have to wait 4seconds instead of two, you're leaving half your revenue on the table.