5 ms·

Can I get some of the http/2 performance benefits by putting a http/2 reverse proxy in front of a regular http server? Does such a thing exist?

chadaustin 11y ago
Yes, you can just configure the spdy plugin for nginx and place it in front of your webserver. Easy and we measured significant load-time wins.
- quintin 11y ago
  This might be too much to ask, but you can share the Nginx config file(s)?
  - imrehg 11y ago
    Adding SPDY is really nothing much in nginx (and that one of the thing that makes it awesome). In practice, if you already have an SSL server, just add the "spdy" to the listen line like "listen 443 ssl spdy;", restart and you are done[1]. Then making it proxy request is just one location definition with "proxy_pass"[2]. [1]: http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_spdy_module.html http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_spdy_module.html [2]: http://nginx.com/resources/admin-guide/reverse-proxy/ http://nginx.com/resources/admin-guide/reverse-proxy/
acdha 11y ago
Yes – you won't get things like server push but the core feature of allowing the browser to queue a large number of requests and receive responses out of order is a big win even if you do nothing else. chadaustin already mentioned nginx, which seems to be the most popular choice. This is alos one of the examples for H2O: https://h2o.examp1e.net/ https://h2o.examp1e.net/ … and Apache Traffic Server just shipped support in v5.3.0, which might be of interest if you want to setup a generic front-end layer for a ton of backend services: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/TS/What%27s+New+in+v5.3.x#What%27sNewinv5.3.x-HTTP/2 https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/TS/What%27s+New+... One thing I haven't looked into is whether any of these will try to use server push for content which has is referenced by <link rel=preload> in an HTML page. That could be very useful for render-blocking CSS/JS.
- johnny22 11y ago
  AFAIK nginx doesn't yet implement server push for either SPDY or HTTP/2 (at least in the open source version).

chadaustin 11y ago

Yes, you can just configure the spdy plugin for nginx and place it in front of your webserver. Easy and we measured significant load-time wins.

quintin 11y ago
This might be too much to ask, but you can share the Nginx config file(s)?
- imrehg 11y ago
  Adding SPDY is really nothing much in nginx (and that one of the thing that makes it awesome). In practice, if you already have an SSL server, just add the "spdy" to the listen line like "listen 443 ssl spdy;", restart and you are done[1]. Then making it proxy request is just one location definition with "proxy_pass"[2]. [1]: http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_spdy_module.html http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_spdy_module.html [2]: http://nginx.com/resources/admin-guide/reverse-proxy/ http://nginx.com/resources/admin-guide/reverse-proxy/

acdha 11y ago

Yes – you won't get things like server push but the core feature of allowing the browser to queue a large number of requests and receive responses out of order is a big win even if you do nothing else. chadaustin already mentioned nginx, which seems to be the most popular choice. This is alos one of the examples for H2O: https://h2o.examp1e.net/ https://h2o.examp1e.net/ … and Apache Traffic Server just shipped support in v5.3.0, which might be of interest if you want to setup a generic front-end layer for a ton of backend services: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/TS/What%27s+New+in+v5.3.x#What%27sNewinv5.3.x-HTTP/2 https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/TS/What%27s+New+... One thing I haven't looked into is whether any of these will try to use server push for content which has is referenced by <link rel=preload> in an HTML page. That could be very useful for render-blocking CSS/JS.

johnny22 11y ago
AFAIK nginx doesn't yet implement server push for either SPDY or HTTP/2 (at least in the open source version).