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arXiv · 1507.06562

To HTTP/2, or Not To HTTP/2, That Is The Question

Matteo Varvello·Kyle Schomp·David Naylor·Jeremy Blackburn·Alessandro Finamore·Kostantina Papagiannaki
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Abstract

As of February, 2015, HTTP/2, the update to the 16-year-old HTTP 1.1, is officially complete. HTTP/2 aims to improve the Web experience by solving well-known problems (e.g., head of line blocking and redundant headers), while introducing new features (e.g., server push and content priority). On paper HTTP/2 represents the future of the Web. Yet, it is unclear whether the Web itself will, and should, hop on board. To shed some light on these questions, we built a measurement platform that monitors HTTP/2 adoption and performance across the Alexa top 1 million websites on a daily basis. Our system is live and up-to-date results can be viewed at http://isthewebhttp2yet.com/. In this paper, we report our initial findings from a 6 month measurement campaign (November 2014 - May 2015). We find 13,000 websites reporting HTTP/2 support, but only 600, mostly hosted by Google and Twitter, actually serving content. In terms of speed, we find no significant benefits from HTTP/2 under stable network conditions. More benefits appear in a 3G network where current Web development practices make HTTP/2 more resilient to losses and delay variation than previously believed.

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Matteo Varvello, Kyle Schomp, David Naylor, Jeremy Blackburn, Alessandro Finamore, Kostantina Papagiannaki. 2015-07-23. To HTTP/2, or Not To HTTP/2, That Is The Question. https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.06562

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