5 ms·

HTTP/1.1 is not being retired though, so I'm not sure I follow the argument about any forced switching cost for small companies. (Which I attempted to cover in

HTTP/1.1 is not being retired though, so I'm not sure I follow the argument about any forced switching cost for small companies. (Which I attempted to cover in my 100k estimate anyways, though you're free to dispute it). Off-the-shelf servers will implement it as an option if you want to turn it on, some clients will support it, and for the rest, status quo should hold? Not for some - e.g. firewall manufactures will presumably have to care - but the vast majority I don't really see being negatively affected by the existence of this standard. Speed increases will presumably be consumed by continued bloat on part of publishers, as has historically happened in all tech innovations. Which might argue that it doesn't matter regardless and no optimization is ever useful, but that's both defeatist and ignores companies who do care (e.g. CloudFlare), for whom 4% probably matters now and will matter still in a decade.

throwaway189262 6y ago
I think you're seriously underestimating the number of systems that will be forced to deal with HTTP/3 if it's standardized. These days nearly everything uses HTTP. Changing HTTP is almost as big as adding another option to TCP/UDP Everything that touches HTTP connections. Proxies, transparent proxies, web application firewalls, every network analysis and debugging tool, layer 7 load balancers. There's probably half a million hardware firewalls out there that won't ever get a software update. As soon as http/3 is released, they're useless. The ones that can be upgraded need downtime and people time to do so. Just in firewalls this change could cost 400 million. Realistically, the consequences of HTTP/3 will cost billions. Is 4% faster speed worth that? There's a lot of other ways to increase speed 4% without spending any money. Like turning on profile guided optimization in the browser, or just waiting a year for CPU and network speeds to increase that much. I'm not being defeatist here, a maximum of 4% performance increase is just not very good. Nobody would switch a video or audio codec for a few percent, why is HTTP considered easier? I say to Google: come back with something better. 20-30%? Totally worth it. If HTTP/2 is truly within 4% of optimal we should never touch it again
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throwaway189262 6y ago

I think you're seriously underestimating the number of systems that will be forced to deal with HTTP/3 if it's standardized. These days nearly everything uses HTTP. Changing HTTP is almost as big as adding another option to TCP/UDP Everything that touches HTTP connections. Proxies, transparent proxies, web application firewalls, every network analysis and debugging tool, layer 7 load balancers. There's probably half a million hardware firewalls out there that won't ever get a software update. As soon as http/3 is released, they're useless. The ones that can be upgraded need downtime and people time to do so. Just in firewalls this change could cost 400 million. Realistically, the consequences of HTTP/3 will cost billions. Is 4% faster speed worth that? There's a lot of other ways to increase speed 4% without spending any money. Like turning on profile guided optimization in the browser, or just waiting a year for CPU and network speeds to increase that much. I'm not being defeatist here, a maximum of 4% performance increase is just not very good. Nobody would switch a video or audio codec for a few percent, why is HTTP considered easier? I say to Google: come back with something better. 20-30%? Totally worth it. If HTTP/2 is truly within 4% of optimal we should never touch it again

deleted 6y ago
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