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I’m pretty sure I’ll never understand QUIC completely in my lifetime. I do know HTTP 1.1 through and through (it’s really easy). The fact that HTTP 1.1 speeds

I’m pretty sure I’ll never understand QUIC completely in my lifetime. I do know HTTP 1.1 through and through (it’s really easy). The fact that HTTP 1.1 speeds are even comparable, let alone faster in some situations, should at least tip the scale in its favor.

arpa 5y ago
obscure standards mean less possibility that someone else without google-scale resources will implement their own client/server.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  And that is one of the key "benefits" of HTTP/3 if you're a Google-scale company.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  Except there are already several such implementations and nobody is going to deprecate older HTTP versions.
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    Chrome has an overwhelming portion of the web browser installed base. It's full of dark patterns and scary warnings about "dangerous" things like unencrypted HTTP. I don't have a lot of faith that they're not going to disable older HTTP versions at some point.
- TingPing 5y ago
  There are many implementations of QUIC already, its quite diverse...
bawolff 5y ago
> The fact that HTTP 1.1 speeds are even comparable, let alone faster in some situations, should at least tip the scale in its favor. Are these realistic web browsing scenarios? Because that seems false. For most websites http/2 is a pretty significant performance win.
cogman10 5y ago
Are you sure you "know" HTTP 1.1 through and through? How much do you understand about gzip or brotili? How much do you know about TLS? Do you understand all of the functionality of TCP? Network congestion and checksuming? QUIC includes compression, encryption, and transport into the standard which is why it's more complicated. Just because Http 1.1 doesn't include those parts explicitly into the standard, doesn't mean they are unused. Http 1.1 is only "easy" because it sits atop a sea of complexity that rarely faces the same critiques as Quic does.
WorldMaker 5y ago
> I’m pretty sure I’ll never understand QUIC completely in my lifetime. Do you understand how to build TCP packets by hand? A lot of the confusion between QUIC and HTTP/3 is intentional because it is somewhat merging the layers that used to be entirely separate. All the examples elsewhere of "I can telnet/netcat to an HTTP/1.1 server and mostly do the thing" avoid the obvious fact that telnet/netcat is still doing all the work of splitting the messages into TCP packets and following TCP rules. Presumably QUIC and HTTP/3 are separate enough to still warrant the idea of a telnet/netcat for QUIC taking care of the low level details and then you could try to write HTTP/3 on top of those apps a little easier, in a similar fashion. Though maybe not, without the rich history of telnet-related protocols on top of TCP and HTTP/3 still currently the only protocol targeting QUIC today.
Matthias247 5y ago
Comparing HTTP/1 to QUIC is apples to oranges. You would need to compare HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/3. And QUIC to a combination of TCP and TLS. Do you understand those through and through too - or are you just utilizing libraries to make them work? HTTP/3 is actually not super complex. The main trickiness comes from header compression. But unlike HTTP/2 the stateful QPACK compression part in HTTP/3 can actually be deactivated, and just the stateless static dictionary and huffmann compression being used.

arpa 5y ago

obscure standards mean less possibility that someone else without google-scale resources will implement their own client/server.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
And that is one of the key "benefits" of HTTP/3 if you're a Google-scale company.
bayesian_horse 5y ago
Except there are already several such implementations and nobody is going to deprecate older HTTP versions.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  Chrome has an overwhelming portion of the web browser installed base. It's full of dark patterns and scary warnings about "dangerous" things like unencrypted HTTP. I don't have a lot of faith that they're not going to disable older HTTP versions at some point.
TingPing 5y ago
There are many implementations of QUIC already, its quite diverse...

bawolff 5y ago

> The fact that HTTP 1.1 speeds are even comparable, let alone faster in some situations, should at least tip the scale in its favor. Are these realistic web browsing scenarios? Because that seems false. For most websites http/2 is a pretty significant performance win.

cogman10 5y ago

Are you sure you "know" HTTP 1.1 through and through? How much do you understand about gzip or brotili? How much do you know about TLS? Do you understand all of the functionality of TCP? Network congestion and checksuming? QUIC includes compression, encryption, and transport into the standard which is why it's more complicated. Just because Http 1.1 doesn't include those parts explicitly into the standard, doesn't mean they are unused. Http 1.1 is only "easy" because it sits atop a sea of complexity that rarely faces the same critiques as Quic does.

WorldMaker 5y ago

> I’m pretty sure I’ll never understand QUIC completely in my lifetime. Do you understand how to build TCP packets by hand? A lot of the confusion between QUIC and HTTP/3 is intentional because it is somewhat merging the layers that used to be entirely separate. All the examples elsewhere of "I can telnet/netcat to an HTTP/1.1 server and mostly do the thing" avoid the obvious fact that telnet/netcat is still doing all the work of splitting the messages into TCP packets and following TCP rules. Presumably QUIC and HTTP/3 are separate enough to still warrant the idea of a telnet/netcat for QUIC taking care of the low level details and then you could try to write HTTP/3 on top of those apps a little easier, in a similar fashion. Though maybe not, without the rich history of telnet-related protocols on top of TCP and HTTP/3 still currently the only protocol targeting QUIC today.

Matthias247 5y ago

Comparing HTTP/1 to QUIC is apples to oranges. You would need to compare HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/3. And QUIC to a combination of TCP and TLS. Do you understand those through and through too - or are you just utilizing libraries to make them work? HTTP/3 is actually not super complex. The main trickiness comes from header compression. But unlike HTTP/2 the stateful QPACK compression part in HTTP/3 can actually be deactivated, and just the stateless static dictionary and huffmann compression being used.