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THis was my thoughts as well. For desktops HTTP2 is mostly ok, possibly an improvement. For Mobile it wasn't. I raised this when we were trailing in at $financ

THis was my thoughts as well. For desktops HTTP2 is mostly ok, possibly an improvement. For Mobile it wasn't. I raised this when we were trailing in at $financial_media_company. Alas the problems were ignored because HTTP2 was new and shiny, and fastly at the time was pushing it. I remember being told by a number of engineers that I wasn't qualified to make assertions about latency, TCP and multiplexing, which was fun. I still am not convinced by QUIC. I really think that we should have gone for a file exchange protocol, with separate control, data and metadata channels. Rather than this complicated mush of half remembered HTTP snippets transmuted into binary. We know that despite best efforts website size is going to grow bigger, in both file size and number. Lets just embrace that and design HTTP to be a low latency file transfer protocol, with extra channels for real time general purpose comms.

johncolanduoni 5y ago
Isn’t HTTP/3 a low latency file transfer protocol, and WebTransport over HTTP/3 extra channels for real time general purpose comms? It’s also worth noting that HTTP/3 actually does use a separate QUIC channel for control.
ReactiveJelly 5y ago
I don't understand the "HTTP snippets transmuted into binary" part. QUIC itself doesn't have the request/response style of HTTP, it doesn't know anything about HTTP, it's just datagrams and streams inside the tunnel. So you could use QUIC to build a competitor to HTTP/3, a custom protocol with bi-directional control, data, and metadata streams. In fact, I'm looking forward to when Someone Else writes an SFTP / FTP replacement in QUIC. HTTP is already a better file transfer protocol than FTP. (because HTTP has byte-range headers, which AIUI are not well-supported by FTP servers) Think how much we could do if multiple streams and encryption were as simple as importing one library.
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  > I don't understand the "HTTP snippets transmuted into binary" part. Yup, my mistake, I meant to say HTTP3 over QUIC. At a previous company(many years ago), I designed a protocol that was a replacement for aspera. The idea being that it could allow high speed transfer over long distance, with high packet loss (think 130-150ms ping). We could max out a 1gig link without much effort, even with >0.5% packet loss. In its present form its optimised for throughput rather than latency. However its perfectly possible to tune it on fly to optimise for latency.

johncolanduoni 5y ago

Isn’t HTTP/3 a low latency file transfer protocol, and WebTransport over HTTP/3 extra channels for real time general purpose comms? It’s also worth noting that HTTP/3 actually does use a separate QUIC channel for control.

ReactiveJelly 5y ago

I don't understand the "HTTP snippets transmuted into binary" part. QUIC itself doesn't have the request/response style of HTTP, it doesn't know anything about HTTP, it's just datagrams and streams inside the tunnel. So you could use QUIC to build a competitor to HTTP/3, a custom protocol with bi-directional control, data, and metadata streams. In fact, I'm looking forward to when Someone Else writes an SFTP / FTP replacement in QUIC. HTTP is already a better file transfer protocol than FTP. (because HTTP has byte-range headers, which AIUI are not well-supported by FTP servers) Think how much we could do if multiple streams and encryption were as simple as importing one library.

KaiserPro 5y ago
> I don't understand the "HTTP snippets transmuted into binary" part. Yup, my mistake, I meant to say HTTP3 over QUIC. At a previous company(many years ago), I designed a protocol that was a replacement for aspera. The idea being that it could allow high speed transfer over long distance, with high packet loss (think 130-150ms ping). We could max out a 1gig link without much effort, even with >0.5% packet loss. In its present form its optimised for throughput rather than latency. However its perfectly possible to tune it on fly to optimise for latency.