4 ms·

The question is if on balance, http/2 and up really is worth the complexity when http/1.1 has served us well enough, with peak web traffic already behind us. C

The question is if on balance, http/2 and up really is worth the complexity when http/1.1 has served us well enough, with peak web traffic already behind us. Considering that we were able to somehow run the web (and messaging and mail and apps) 20-30 years ago with much, much less capable computers. It's almost as if computers have become way too powerful, so we had to invent atrocious web apps to offset any performance advances. Similarly, F/OSS was too ubiquitous so we had to invent "the cloud". I can't help to see anything other than a self-serving power end game in this, with a few monopolies grabbing everything left, and a legion of developers having a vested interest to keep the hamster wheel spinning. Regarding the implementations of http/2 and up you speak of, I know only a single F/OSS one (ng-http2) actually used in server-side production.

tick_tock_tick 6y ago
3 has real value 2 is a waste of time. I will state with great confidence you won't see 2 in the wild in the next 5 years.
- chrismorgan 6y ago
  I dunno, the topic may be a bit more nuanced than that because the HTTP/2 upgrade is free (via ALPN, part of the TLS handshake) while there’s not yet any good way of starting on HTTP/3. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24855848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24855848 that I wrote 42 days ago on this very topic, with arguments in both directions.
jlokier 6y ago
> Regarding the implementations of http/2 and up you speak of, I know only a single F/OSS one (ng-http2) actually used in server-side production. I've been using NginX HTTP/2 for years, and that's F/OSS. It doesn't use ng-http2. Pretty sure this is widely used by others, including by Cloudflare who sponsored it.
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  Point taken, you're right re nginx
rakoo 6y ago
> peak web traffic already behind us I absolutely don't see peak traffic being behind us. The internet is moving more and more bits on HTTP; videos' size is always ever increasing and is always distributed on HTTP, VR is coming, the default protocol for any Service is _always_ HTTP... we've definitely reached the maximum yet
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  > videos' size is always ever increasing and is always distributed on HTTP, VR is coming, the default protocol for any Service is _always_ HTTP... Therein lies the problem. Do we really all have to shoulder youtube's (and porn networks) problems? Especially when yt always sends huge video streams even when you only want music?
  - mwcampbell 6y ago
    > Therein lies the problem. Do we really all have to shoulder youtube's (and porn networks) problems? No, you don't. Whether you're working on the client or server side, you can keep using HTTP/1.1, and the other side will downgrade to accommodate you. Meanwhile, those of us who want to optimally serve our users on both good and bad connections will just use the multiple, freely available implementations of HTTP/2 and eventually HTTP/3.
    - varjag 6y ago
      This is half truth at best. It's only a matter of time until HTTP/1.1 is forced out by the tech/browser oligopoly: just look where we are with plaintext HTTP now. The reason for HTTP3 is marginal gains that only make sense at enormous scales for large operators. The rest of us pay for this with increased complexity.
      - mwcampbell 6y ago
        > just look where we are with plaintext HTTP now. Yes, and the upgrade to HTTPS has been an improvement for end-users.
aseipp 6y ago
> http/2 and up you speak of, I know only a single F/OSS one (ng-http2) actually used in server-side production. I can think of, like, five off the top of my head (mod_http2, nginx, h2o/quicly, about a million go apps that use http2, Rust has a production HTTP/2 implementation or three, and Microsoft/Apple's implementations if you want ones on the client side.) It's not anyone's fault but your own if you can't look it up. There are 23 implementations in the QUIC interop matrix which are cross tested against each other as of now, too, and it wasn't hard to find: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D0tW89vOoaScs3IY9RGC0UesWGAwE6xyLk0l4JtvTVg/edit#gid=1268516408 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D0tW89vOoaScs3IY9RGC... and several of those stacks also implement HTTP/2 as well. It's not like the internet was some rosy garden in the HTTP/1.1 era where everything was magical and democratic and perfect. HTTP/1.1 is easy to implement wrong, and most people just used stock HTTP servers to front their application anyway regardless of the actual protocol spoken to the end user, which is how it's always been. Besides, you don't have to actually have to be a megacorp to see the benefit of HTTP/2 or QUIC, you can just... try using your imagination. I have an actual real workload where I want to fetch potentially hundreds of metadata files from an HTTP server. HTTP/2 is a dramatic performance boost for workloads like this. It's not rocket science to see why, despite people wringing their hands about opening multiple parallel connections, etc. > Similarly, F/OSS was too ubiquitous so we had to invent "the cloud". You've got a lot of things very confused in your head, it seems. FOSS was never "ubiquitous" until recently, and it was only allowed that status because corporations decided they could make more money with it. They can also make money with proprietary software, so they do that too when possible. You seem to be implying the rise of FOSS was some kind of "outsider threat" to the system which needed to be suppressed, lest it make things "too good for us", and so it was then tragically coopted by Google. No, it was not; FOSS as a movement was always a captive animal from the very beginning and its viability was always at the mercy of corporations with mass market penetration and reach, not the other way around. It's not surprising it took off; it turns out "Don't pay people for their work and keep all the profits for yourself" is a tried-and-true corporate tactic for making money since basically forever. Not that it's relevant to this thread, but the sooner the free software movement realizes it's completely failed, that it's never even truly had a chance at success, the sooner it'll be able to actually succeed at something.
- 6y ago

tick_tock_tick 6y ago

3 has real value 2 is a waste of time. I will state with great confidence you won't see 2 in the wild in the next 5 years.

chrismorgan 6y ago
I dunno, the topic may be a bit more nuanced than that because the HTTP/2 upgrade is free (via ALPN, part of the TLS handshake) while there’s not yet any good way of starting on HTTP/3. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24855848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24855848 that I wrote 42 days ago on this very topic, with arguments in both directions.

jlokier 6y ago

> Regarding the implementations of http/2 and up you speak of, I know only a single F/OSS one (ng-http2) actually used in server-side production. I've been using NginX HTTP/2 for years, and that's F/OSS. It doesn't use ng-http2. Pretty sure this is widely used by others, including by Cloudflare who sponsored it.

tannhaeuser 6y ago
Point taken, you're right re nginx

rakoo 6y ago

> peak web traffic already behind us I absolutely don't see peak traffic being behind us. The internet is moving more and more bits on HTTP; videos' size is always ever increasing and is always distributed on HTTP, VR is coming, the default protocol for any Service is _always_ HTTP... we've definitely reached the maximum yet

tannhaeuser 6y ago
> videos' size is always ever increasing and is always distributed on HTTP, VR is coming, the default protocol for any Service is _always_ HTTP... Therein lies the problem. Do we really all have to shoulder youtube's (and porn networks) problems? Especially when yt always sends huge video streams even when you only want music?
- mwcampbell 6y ago
  > Therein lies the problem. Do we really all have to shoulder youtube's (and porn networks) problems? No, you don't. Whether you're working on the client or server side, you can keep using HTTP/1.1, and the other side will downgrade to accommodate you. Meanwhile, those of us who want to optimally serve our users on both good and bad connections will just use the multiple, freely available implementations of HTTP/2 and eventually HTTP/3.
  - varjag 6y ago
    This is half truth at best. It's only a matter of time until HTTP/1.1 is forced out by the tech/browser oligopoly: just look where we are with plaintext HTTP now. The reason for HTTP3 is marginal gains that only make sense at enormous scales for large operators. The rest of us pay for this with increased complexity.
    - mwcampbell 6y ago
      > just look where we are with plaintext HTTP now. Yes, and the upgrade to HTTPS has been an improvement for end-users.

aseipp 6y ago

> http/2 and up you speak of, I know only a single F/OSS one (ng-http2) actually used in server-side production. I can think of, like, five off the top of my head (mod_http2, nginx, h2o/quicly, about a million go apps that use http2, Rust has a production HTTP/2 implementation or three, and Microsoft/Apple's implementations if you want ones on the client side.) It's not anyone's fault but your own if you can't look it up. There are 23 implementations in the QUIC interop matrix which are cross tested against each other as of now, too, and it wasn't hard to find: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D0tW89vOoaScs3IY9RGC0UesWGAwE6xyLk0l4JtvTVg/edit#gid=1268516408 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D0tW89vOoaScs3IY9RGC... and several of those stacks also implement HTTP/2 as well. It's not like the internet was some rosy garden in the HTTP/1.1 era where everything was magical and democratic and perfect. HTTP/1.1 is easy to implement wrong, and most people just used stock HTTP servers to front their application anyway regardless of the actual protocol spoken to the end user, which is how it's always been. Besides, you don't have to actually have to be a megacorp to see the benefit of HTTP/2 or QUIC, you can just... try using your imagination. I have an actual real workload where I want to fetch potentially hundreds of metadata files from an HTTP server. HTTP/2 is a dramatic performance boost for workloads like this. It's not rocket science to see why, despite people wringing their hands about opening multiple parallel connections, etc. > Similarly, F/OSS was too ubiquitous so we had to invent "the cloud". You've got a lot of things very confused in your head, it seems. FOSS was never "ubiquitous" until recently, and it was only allowed that status because corporations decided they could make more money with it. They can also make money with proprietary software, so they do that too when possible. You seem to be implying the rise of FOSS was some kind of "outsider threat" to the system which needed to be suppressed, lest it make things "too good for us", and so it was then tragically coopted by Google. No, it was not; FOSS as a movement was always a captive animal from the very beginning and its viability was always at the mercy of corporations with mass market penetration and reach, not the other way around. It's not surprising it took off; it turns out "Don't pay people for their work and keep all the profits for yourself" is a tried-and-true corporate tactic for making money since basically forever. Not that it's relevant to this thread, but the sooner the free software movement realizes it's completely failed, that it's never even truly had a chance at success, the sooner it'll be able to actually succeed at something.

6y ago