6 ms·

Ask HN: Convince Me of HTTP 2

14 points by elgatito 3y ago

Possibly a clickbaity title :) but it's an honest question on the hype on the new HTTP versions. I am familiar with the hypothetical advantages and with the synthetic benchmarks, but does this really translate into noticable, real-world differences in browsing experience? IMHO it does not. I've had my browser configured for HTTP 1.1 now for months and enabled HTTP 2 and 3 for the past few days, but cannot say there was mentioned noticable difference in how fast sites were loading. Did I miss anything? Did you notice a significant speedup when you switched to HTTP 2? Please only your real-world experience, as mentioned I know it can have better performance in synthetic benchmarks.

yyyk 3y ago
IIRC, There are studies which show a difference, especially in poor latency scenarios. The issue with HTTP/2 is that it complicates the stack: ideally one would support either HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 but there's little point in supporting both, since you always have HTTP 1.1 to fall back to. HTTP/3 offers best performance, HTTP/1 best compatibility, HTTP/2... doesn't offer that much in comparison.
- elgatito 3y ago
  Thanks, but did you personally experience noticable better request times with the newer versions?
  - yyyk 3y ago
    I couldn't make the comparison since I upgraded my internet connection at the same time. I strongly suspect most (all?) of the improvement came to that.
z3t4 3y ago
I would say server push is the main selling feature. It allows you send the assets together with the first request in order to save a few roundtrips. It however took years for the major browser to implement it properly eg. Not re-downloading the pushes files. And now server push is being deprecated.
clnq 3y ago
Yes, I do notice a significant speed up with HTTP/3 compared to 1.1. But I have spent some years of my life playing eSports shooters competitively and I can tell the difference between something happening in 150ms or 250ms and monitors below 120Hz make me uncomfortable. Some people, on the other hand, claim that cloud gaming has no perceivable input lag. So it depends on the person. With that said, 1.1->3 should be perceivable for most people, I think. Head-of-line blocking is slowing things down significantly. HTTP/3 latency feels like browsing with UDP, which it is. Of course, browsers do caching and pre-emptive loading, so the user experience in many cases will be the same. But when loading a website for the first time, or reading an article with many images for the first time, I think the difference in page load/draw times can be easily observed. EDIT: On further investigation, it seems like 1.1->3 should be perceivable for most people if they are on poor quality connections, and if the website/web app is heavy. Looks like I fall into that bracket with some of my devices as I live in an ancient house with stone walls, the natural enemy of WiFi.
- elgatito 3y ago
  Would you have a site where that can be reproduced? While I am not saying it might be to some extent subjective, I cannot say I have noticed anything noticably different between and 1.1 and 2 or 3. For that reason I'd be curious on which site that would be noticable.
  - clnq 3y ago
    YouTube, for example. I haven’t done a rigorous test and looked at the timings. But I disabled HTTP/3 in my Safari settings just now and browsed around YouTube in Private mode. Then I did the same with HTTP/3 enabled. It was at least 3x faster at initial page draws with HTTP/3. I did this test just now on weak WiFi.
    - elgatito 3y ago
      Thanks for the example. Though, Youtube was definitely one of the sites I visited. I just ran a test with HTTP 1.1 and HTTP 3 - and in both cases, it took about 10 seconds until the whole page was loaded. It was already usable earlier than that, but even that was similar between 1.1 and 3. The test was done on a "regular" Wifi connection.
andrewmcwatters 3y ago
I think any meaningful improvements that could have arrived by improvements to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol itself will have and can have been eaten up by all the stupidity of modern web development. So no, I don't think anything meaningful has arrived in terms of performance, otherwise we'd all be singing its praises. Rest In Peace, HTTP/2 Server Push.
rektide 3y ago
> Please only your real-world experience, Hard NACK, absolutely not. Noticeable is not relevant. If there are a billion people who load 40 pages and each saves 2ms, we save 2.5 human years a day. Http2 isn't even the good stuff. It still has horrible head of line blocking. Where these protocols, http3 in particular, has real greatness is in it's ability to handle lossy & jittery connections. On http1 or http2 with a dodgy mobile connection, recovery from a missed packet or three can be egregiously painful. With http3 the bits can keep flowing. In general I have high skepticism that you want to be convinced. This narrow on-guiderials "anecdote only" line of inquiry speaks to hang ups, about resistance to allowing progress. You are looking for personal annecodotes, talking about your experience, but I highly doubt humans have the mind to really be able to tell about very fine differences, but that doesn't invalidate time saved, as we load so many resources a year. Last, you likely have very fine internet connections where many of the overwhelmingly grand advantages don't come out.
- elgatito 3y ago
  I am afraid I am not sure what you are saying. Noticeable is relevant. Either it is noticable faster or it isn't. In my experience it isn't, hence the question. If you can convince me with a site where one can actually notice that, I'd be more than happy to change my stance, but multiplying 2 millisecond by X humans or using a kbps connection as baseline won't cut it I am afraid :) As for your assumption on the Internet connection, we are talking about a mobile connection, so not exactly fiber :)
  - rektide 3y ago
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    - elgatito 3y ago
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      - rektide 3y ago
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kierank 3y ago
Take a flight and use the onboard wifi to visit websites.
deleted 3y ago
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nepthar 3y ago
Genuine question - why is it up to us to convince you? It's already in widespread use benefiting the folks who use it.
jsdeveloper 3y ago
Its not noticible at the client side as much it is at the server side. Every millisecond saved at server side allows it to serve other thousands of connections.
brundolf 3y ago
My question is, why not? I think we can all agree it's better, whether or not a noticeable amount for a given person doing a given activity, and it's pretty well baked into the stack at this point
- deleted 3y ago
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austin-cheney 3y ago
No. Instead I will convince you in opposition to HTTP. Switching from HTTP to WebSockets across the board increased the test automation in my app 7x. This also simplified a massive amount of administration and maintenance in my application regarding micro services. HTTP2 is better than HTTP for downloading many assets simultaneously, but if you want your web application to be fast you need to bundle assets as much as possible there are fewer things to need in parallel.
- deleted 3y ago
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14 points by elgatito 3y ago

yyyk 3y ago

IIRC, There are studies which show a difference, especially in poor latency scenarios. The issue with HTTP/2 is that it complicates the stack: ideally one would support either HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 but there's little point in supporting both, since you always have HTTP 1.1 to fall back to. HTTP/3 offers best performance, HTTP/1 best compatibility, HTTP/2... doesn't offer that much in comparison.

elgatito 3y ago
Thanks, but did you personally experience noticable better request times with the newer versions?
- yyyk 3y ago
  I couldn't make the comparison since I upgraded my internet connection at the same time. I strongly suspect most (all?) of the improvement came to that.

z3t4 3y ago

I would say server push is the main selling feature. It allows you send the assets together with the first request in order to save a few roundtrips. It however took years for the major browser to implement it properly eg. Not re-downloading the pushes files. And now server push is being deprecated.

clnq 3y ago

Yes, I do notice a significant speed up with HTTP/3 compared to 1.1. But I have spent some years of my life playing eSports shooters competitively and I can tell the difference between something happening in 150ms or 250ms and monitors below 120Hz make me uncomfortable. Some people, on the other hand, claim that cloud gaming has no perceivable input lag. So it depends on the person. With that said, 1.1->3 should be perceivable for most people, I think. Head-of-line blocking is slowing things down significantly. HTTP/3 latency feels like browsing with UDP, which it is. Of course, browsers do caching and pre-emptive loading, so the user experience in many cases will be the same. But when loading a website for the first time, or reading an article with many images for the first time, I think the difference in page load/draw times can be easily observed. EDIT: On further investigation, it seems like 1.1->3 should be perceivable for most people if they are on poor quality connections, and if the website/web app is heavy. Looks like I fall into that bracket with some of my devices as I live in an ancient house with stone walls, the natural enemy of WiFi.

elgatito 3y ago
Would you have a site where that can be reproduced? While I am not saying it might be to some extent subjective, I cannot say I have noticed anything noticably different between and 1.1 and 2 or 3. For that reason I'd be curious on which site that would be noticable.
- clnq 3y ago
  YouTube, for example. I haven’t done a rigorous test and looked at the timings. But I disabled HTTP/3 in my Safari settings just now and browsed around YouTube in Private mode. Then I did the same with HTTP/3 enabled. It was at least 3x faster at initial page draws with HTTP/3. I did this test just now on weak WiFi.
  - elgatito 3y ago
    Thanks for the example. Though, Youtube was definitely one of the sites I visited. I just ran a test with HTTP 1.1 and HTTP 3 - and in both cases, it took about 10 seconds until the whole page was loaded. It was already usable earlier than that, but even that was similar between 1.1 and 3. The test was done on a "regular" Wifi connection.

andrewmcwatters 3y ago

I think any meaningful improvements that could have arrived by improvements to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol itself will have and can have been eaten up by all the stupidity of modern web development. So no, I don't think anything meaningful has arrived in terms of performance, otherwise we'd all be singing its praises. Rest In Peace, HTTP/2 Server Push.

rektide 3y ago

> Please only your real-world experience, Hard NACK, absolutely not. Noticeable is not relevant. If there are a billion people who load 40 pages and each saves 2ms, we save 2.5 human years a day. Http2 isn't even the good stuff. It still has horrible head of line blocking. Where these protocols, http3 in particular, has real greatness is in it's ability to handle lossy & jittery connections. On http1 or http2 with a dodgy mobile connection, recovery from a missed packet or three can be egregiously painful. With http3 the bits can keep flowing. In general I have high skepticism that you want to be convinced. This narrow on-guiderials "anecdote only" line of inquiry speaks to hang ups, about resistance to allowing progress. You are looking for personal annecodotes, talking about your experience, but I highly doubt humans have the mind to really be able to tell about very fine differences, but that doesn't invalidate time saved, as we load so many resources a year. Last, you likely have very fine internet connections where many of the overwhelmingly grand advantages don't come out.

elgatito 3y ago
I am afraid I am not sure what you are saying. Noticeable is relevant. Either it is noticable faster or it isn't. In my experience it isn't, hence the question. If you can convince me with a site where one can actually notice that, I'd be more than happy to change my stance, but multiplying 2 millisecond by X humans or using a kbps connection as baseline won't cut it I am afraid :) As for your assumption on the Internet connection, we are talking about a mobile connection, so not exactly fiber :)
- rektide 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - elgatito 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - rektide 3y ago
      [flagged]

kierank 3y ago

Take a flight and use the onboard wifi to visit websites.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nepthar 3y ago

Genuine question - why is it up to us to convince you? It's already in widespread use benefiting the folks who use it.

jsdeveloper 3y ago

Its not noticible at the client side as much it is at the server side. Every millisecond saved at server side allows it to serve other thousands of connections.

brundolf 3y ago

My question is, why not? I think we can all agree it's better, whether or not a noticeable amount for a given person doing a given activity, and it's pretty well baked into the stack at this point

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

austin-cheney 3y ago

No. Instead I will convince you in opposition to HTTP. Switching from HTTP to WebSockets across the board increased the test automation in my app 7x. This also simplified a massive amount of administration and maintenance in my application regarding micro services. HTTP2 is better than HTTP for downloading many assets simultaneously, but if you want your web application to be fast you need to bundle assets as much as possible there are fewer things to need in parallel.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]