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Every single project mentioned in the article is to some extent either open source and/or community driven. So nobody considered HTTP/3 interesting enough to r

by artyom 2y ago

Every single project mentioned in the article is to some extent either open source and/or community driven. So nobody considered HTTP/3 interesting enough to rush and add support for it very quickly. It'll get there, but fast? I don't think so, see IPv6. Also, nobody considered HTTP/3 worth enough of paying for maintainers to add support for it.

kccqzy 2y ago
The comparison with IPv6 is interesting. IPv6 isn't mainly driven by open source or community. It is driven by the needs of large corporations, including both ISPs and tech companies. ISPs like T-mobile wanting to run an IPv6-only backbone network, and tech companies like Apple forcing every app in the App Store to work in IPv6-only mode (DNS64+NAT64). New operating system levels features for IPv6 are often proposed by big tech companies and then implemented eagerly by them; see for example DHCP option 108. In a sense the need for IPv6 is driven by corporates just like that for HTTP/3.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  Ummm… Google invented QUIC and pushed it into Chrome and shuttled it through IETF to be ratified as a standard. Some of the large OSS projects are maintained by large companies (eg quiche is by Cloudflare) and Microsoft has MsQuic which you can link against directly or just use the kernel mode version built into the OS directly since Windows 11. The need for QUIC is actually even more driven by corporates since IPv6 was a very small comparative pain point compared to better reaching customers with large latency network connections.
- elcritch 2y ago
  IPv6 always seemed to me to be driven by a certain class of purist networking geeks. Then some corporations started getting on board like you said, but many couldn't care less.
  - FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
    The largest use of IPv6 is in mobile (cell) networks. When they effectively killed IP block mobility (provider independent netblocks), they (the standards bodies) effectively killed it's adoption everywhere else. I work in the networking space and outside of dealing with certain European subsidiaries, we don't use IPv6 anywhere. It's a pain to use and the IPv6 stacks on equipment (routers, firewalls, etc) are no where near the quality, affordability, and reliability of their IPv4 stacks.
    - Sesse__ 2y ago
      What do you mean? IPv6 PI is common and easy to get; there's no big difference between IPv4 and IPv6 there.
      - FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
        I've gone through dozens of applications for a PI block and all been turned down. Heard the same from most of the networking people I know of. One even had their company become a LIR just so they could lock down a block. Outside of Europe I don't know anyone not FAANG sized that managed to get it done in the last few years. In my dealings with small to medium sized biz, I usually go the SDWAN route to aggregate and balance in IPv4 space instead as it is MUCH easier to get it done from an ISP.
        Sesse__ 2y ago
        Huh, I have one for my personal home network :-) Granted, that is in RIPE. As long as you're multihomed, how can they turn it down?
        FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
        Multihoming is broken for most people in IPv6 space. It's stupid easy in IPv4. https://blog.ipspace.net/2010/12/small-site-multihoming-in-ipv6-mission/ https://blog.ipspace.net/2010/12/small-site-multihoming-in-i...
jsheard 2y ago
Nginx (F5) and Go (Google) are hardly scrappy open source projects with limited resources. The former is semi-commercial, you can pay for Nginx and still not have stable HTTP3 support. Google was one of the main drivers of the HTTP3 spec and has supported it both in Chromium and on their own cloud for years, but for whatever reason they haven't put the same effort into Go's stdlib.
- arccy 2y ago
  It's in progress: quic is in testing in http://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/net/quic http://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/net/quic and http3 is being implemented https://github.com/golang/go/issues/70914 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/70914 Since Go has strong backwards compatibility guarantees, they're unlikely to commit to APIs that may need to change in the standard library.
  - Orygin 2y ago
    The backwards compatibility guarantees are for the language and not the standard library. They won't make breaking changes nilly willy but it can and has happened for the std.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
  I'd go with HAProxy over Nginx any day. It far more robust and more capable. They've had QUIC & HTTP/3 since 2022.
hylaride 2y ago
99% of the benefit of HTTP/3 is on distributed web serving where clients are connecting to multiple remote ends on a web page (which lets be honest, is mostly used for serving ads faster). Why would the open source community prioritize this?
- surajrmal 2y ago
  The open source community is full of companies who make money from things like ads.
  - hylaride 2y ago
    Yes, but they've likely already optimized any code that's part of their ad networks to support http/3 anyways. They're not necessarily going to lose sleep if other components doesn't support it.
not_a_bot_4sho 2y ago
> see IPv6 "We'll get to IPv6 after we finish IPv5"

by artyom 2y ago

kccqzy 2y ago

The comparison with IPv6 is interesting. IPv6 isn't mainly driven by open source or community. It is driven by the needs of large corporations, including both ISPs and tech companies. ISPs like T-mobile wanting to run an IPv6-only backbone network, and tech companies like Apple forcing every app in the App Store to work in IPv6-only mode (DNS64+NAT64). New operating system levels features for IPv6 are often proposed by big tech companies and then implemented eagerly by them; see for example DHCP option 108. In a sense the need for IPv6 is driven by corporates just like that for HTTP/3.

vlovich123 2y ago
Ummm… Google invented QUIC and pushed it into Chrome and shuttled it through IETF to be ratified as a standard. Some of the large OSS projects are maintained by large companies (eg quiche is by Cloudflare) and Microsoft has MsQuic which you can link against directly or just use the kernel mode version built into the OS directly since Windows 11. The need for QUIC is actually even more driven by corporates since IPv6 was a very small comparative pain point compared to better reaching customers with large latency network connections.
elcritch 2y ago
IPv6 always seemed to me to be driven by a certain class of purist networking geeks. Then some corporations started getting on board like you said, but many couldn't care less.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
  The largest use of IPv6 is in mobile (cell) networks. When they effectively killed IP block mobility (provider independent netblocks), they (the standards bodies) effectively killed it's adoption everywhere else. I work in the networking space and outside of dealing with certain European subsidiaries, we don't use IPv6 anywhere. It's a pain to use and the IPv6 stacks on equipment (routers, firewalls, etc) are no where near the quality, affordability, and reliability of their IPv4 stacks.
  - Sesse__ 2y ago
    What do you mean? IPv6 PI is common and easy to get; there's no big difference between IPv4 and IPv6 there.
    - FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
      I've gone through dozens of applications for a PI block and all been turned down. Heard the same from most of the networking people I know of. One even had their company become a LIR just so they could lock down a block. Outside of Europe I don't know anyone not FAANG sized that managed to get it done in the last few years. In my dealings with small to medium sized biz, I usually go the SDWAN route to aggregate and balance in IPv4 space instead as it is MUCH easier to get it done from an ISP.
      - Sesse__ 2y ago
        Huh, I have one for my personal home network :-) Granted, that is in RIPE. As long as you're multihomed, how can they turn it down?
        FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
        Multihoming is broken for most people in IPv6 space. It's stupid easy in IPv4. https://blog.ipspace.net/2010/12/small-site-multihoming-in-ipv6-mission/ https://blog.ipspace.net/2010/12/small-site-multihoming-in-i...

jsheard 2y ago

Nginx (F5) and Go (Google) are hardly scrappy open source projects with limited resources. The former is semi-commercial, you can pay for Nginx and still not have stable HTTP3 support. Google was one of the main drivers of the HTTP3 spec and has supported it both in Chromium and on their own cloud for years, but for whatever reason they haven't put the same effort into Go's stdlib.

arccy 2y ago
It's in progress: quic is in testing in http://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/net/quic http://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/net/quic and http3 is being implemented https://github.com/golang/go/issues/70914 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/70914 Since Go has strong backwards compatibility guarantees, they're unlikely to commit to APIs that may need to change in the standard library.
- Orygin 2y ago
  The backwards compatibility guarantees are for the language and not the standard library. They won't make breaking changes nilly willy but it can and has happened for the std.
FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
I'd go with HAProxy over Nginx any day. It far more robust and more capable. They've had QUIC & HTTP/3 since 2022.

hylaride 2y ago

99% of the benefit of HTTP/3 is on distributed web serving where clients are connecting to multiple remote ends on a web page (which lets be honest, is mostly used for serving ads faster). Why would the open source community prioritize this?

surajrmal 2y ago
The open source community is full of companies who make money from things like ads.
- hylaride 2y ago
  Yes, but they've likely already optimized any code that's part of their ad networks to support http/3 anyways. They're not necessarily going to lose sleep if other components doesn't support it.

not_a_bot_4sho 2y ago

> see IPv6 "We'll get to IPv6 after we finish IPv5"