5 ms·

As I said in response to the previous submission re: SPDY, I think the protocol is great. However, relying on TLS NPN to enable it means I can't implement a SPD

by udp 15y ago

As I said in response to the previous submission re: SPDY, I think the protocol is great. However, relying on TLS NPN to enable it means I can't implement a SPDY server with OpenSSL versions prior to 1.1.0, or any version of Windows SChannel (even in Windows 7). Please, please could browser developers consider supporting the Connection: Upgrade and/or Alternate-Protocol headers as an alternative? (I know I'll probably get downvoted for sounding like a broken record, but I'd really like to spread the word about this issue)

JonnieCache 15y ago
This whole thread is a broken record for going on two years now or whenever google first rolled out SPDY for gmail, but I guess it's relevant again right now because Silk uses it.
- aespinoza 15y ago
  I know this is old news. I think the fact that Silk is using it (successfully?) attracted my attention. I dismissed it way back when I heard of it because of the same reasons. But We have to agree that Amazon has very smart people, if they decided to use SPDY, then it is interesting to learn why they thought this was the best solution. This paper obviously doesn't answer that. But in my quest to understand, I found this paper and thought it would be an interesting read for the people in HN who haven't read it.
  - bmelton 15y ago
    It was probably an easy answer, really. It's better than HTTP, is included in Android, which they chose as a base platform, and they don't have to worry about Windows compatibility on their own hardware.
    - abraham 15y ago
      It looks like SPDY was added in Honeycomb so they would have had to add support themselves since Amazon started with Eclair. https://groups.google.com/d/msg/spdy-dev/bwb-qhiLICc/NzbWN0K75KoJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/spdy-dev/bwb-qhiLICc/NzbWN0K...
    - danudey 15y ago
      SPDY is also a more optimized solution for mobile devices. The ability to do server-push resources means that Amazon can fetch/preprocess/compress/cache the resources for a page, and then when that page is requested from another user and can be served from cache, they can dump all the required resources down the pipe automatically without the client having to fetch/parse/request/load/etc. Amazon's 'everything goes through us' solution also optimizes in cases where SPDY normally wouldn't; external resources, such as jQuery served from Google's or Microsoft's AJAX cache, can be pushed to the client, whereas in a normal browsing situation you'd still need one connection to every server, so using multiple hostnames/servers would be detrimental to performance.
bdonlan 15y ago
Why should people care about what certain obsolete versions of OpenSSL support? Also - it doesn't appear that 1.1.0 is released; do you mean to say it's only supported by an unreleased version?
- udp 15y ago
  It would appear so, yes: http://www.openssl.org/news/changelog.html http://www.openssl.org/news/changelog.html Changes between 1.0.1 and 1.1.0 [..] *) Add Next Protocol Negotiation, http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-agl-tls-nextprotoneg-00. Can be disabled with a no-npn flag to config or Configure. Code donated by Google.
agl 15y ago
Patches for stable OpenSSL are linked from: http://technotes.googlecode.com/git/nextprotoneg.html http://technotes.googlecode.com/git/nextprotoneg.html I understand that NPN can be a pain, but it's the right thing to do. Connection: Upgrade is slower and breaks over MITM proxies.
- udp 15y ago
  You can't apply a patch if you're using it as a shared library, and OpenSSL is only part of the problem - what about SChannel on Windows? That can never get NPN support, until perhaps Windows 8. I know NPN is the right thing to do long-term, but shouldn't any possible alternative be supported if it makes SPDY more accessible?

by udp 15y ago

JonnieCache 15y ago

This whole thread is a broken record for going on two years now or whenever google first rolled out SPDY for gmail, but I guess it's relevant again right now because Silk uses it.

aespinoza 15y ago
I know this is old news. I think the fact that Silk is using it (successfully?) attracted my attention. I dismissed it way back when I heard of it because of the same reasons. But We have to agree that Amazon has very smart people, if they decided to use SPDY, then it is interesting to learn why they thought this was the best solution. This paper obviously doesn't answer that. But in my quest to understand, I found this paper and thought it would be an interesting read for the people in HN who haven't read it.
- bmelton 15y ago
  It was probably an easy answer, really. It's better than HTTP, is included in Android, which they chose as a base platform, and they don't have to worry about Windows compatibility on their own hardware.
  - abraham 15y ago
    It looks like SPDY was added in Honeycomb so they would have had to add support themselves since Amazon started with Eclair. https://groups.google.com/d/msg/spdy-dev/bwb-qhiLICc/NzbWN0K75KoJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/spdy-dev/bwb-qhiLICc/NzbWN0K...
  - danudey 15y ago
    SPDY is also a more optimized solution for mobile devices. The ability to do server-push resources means that Amazon can fetch/preprocess/compress/cache the resources for a page, and then when that page is requested from another user and can be served from cache, they can dump all the required resources down the pipe automatically without the client having to fetch/parse/request/load/etc. Amazon's 'everything goes through us' solution also optimizes in cases where SPDY normally wouldn't; external resources, such as jQuery served from Google's or Microsoft's AJAX cache, can be pushed to the client, whereas in a normal browsing situation you'd still need one connection to every server, so using multiple hostnames/servers would be detrimental to performance.

bdonlan 15y ago

Why should people care about what certain obsolete versions of OpenSSL support? Also - it doesn't appear that 1.1.0 is released; do you mean to say it's only supported by an unreleased version?

udp 15y ago
It would appear so, yes: http://www.openssl.org/news/changelog.html http://www.openssl.org/news/changelog.html Changes between 1.0.1 and 1.1.0 [..] *) Add Next Protocol Negotiation, http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-agl-tls-nextprotoneg-00. Can be disabled with a no-npn flag to config or Configure. Code donated by Google.

agl 15y ago

Patches for stable OpenSSL are linked from: http://technotes.googlecode.com/git/nextprotoneg.html http://technotes.googlecode.com/git/nextprotoneg.html I understand that NPN can be a pain, but it's the right thing to do. Connection: Upgrade is slower and breaks over MITM proxies.

udp 15y ago
You can't apply a patch if you're using it as a shared library, and OpenSSL is only part of the problem - what about SChannel on Windows? That can never get NPN support, until perhaps Windows 8. I know NPN is the right thing to do long-term, but shouldn't any possible alternative be supported if it makes SPDY more accessible?