Learning HTTP/2: A Practical Guide for Beginners

by Stephen Ludin, Javier Garza

Overview

What can your organization gain by adopting HTTP/2? How about faster, simpler, and more robust websites and applications? This practical guide demonstrates how the latest version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol can dramatically improve website and application performance. You’ll take a deep dive into HTTP/2 details, and learn how this updated protocol is changing the web landscape.

HTTP/1.1 has been the primary means of communicating data across the web for the past 20 years, but the level of interaction today has gone well beyond what people envisioned in 1997. With this book, authors Stephen Ludin and Javier Garza show you how HTTP/2 will help speed the execution of modern sites and applications.

With this book, you’ll explore:

• Performance challenges that led to the HTTP upgrade
• HTTP/2 in a nutshell, including benefits and transition methods
• Existing best practices and hacks to improve web performance
• HTTP/2 support for browsers, servers, proxies, and content delivery networks
• How the performance of sites using HTTP/2 compares to their HTTP/1.1 experience
• HTTP/2’s effect on specific issues such as latency, packet loss, and Time to First Byte (TTFB)

HTTP/2’s effect on specific issues such as latency, packet loss, and Time to First Byte (TTFB)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781491962602
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/15/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	156
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Stephen Ludin is a Chief Architect for Akamai’s Site Acceleration and Security group. He joined Akamai in 2002 and works out of Akamai’s west-coast headquarter in San Mateo, California. His primary focus has been on projects related to the core proxy technology that is responsible for routing, accelerating, and securing Akamai’s traffic.

Most recently, as a technology leader in the Web Acceleration team, he has been leading the efforts behind Akamai’s next generation acceleration platform and its security and fraud prevention technology stack.

Ludin received his degree from the University of California at San Diego in Computer Music where his coding abilities were used in writing C programs to create experimental music. We are all grateful for his decision to use his technical and management skill in a more aesthetically pleasing realm of making the web a faster and safer realm for commerce and communications.

Javier Garza is a multi-lingual technology evangelist who loves taking things apart, understanding how they work, and finding the best/most practical way of improving them. He started hacking basic-based computer games at the age of 9, and has been working with computers for the past 25 years in Spain, Germany, and the US (half that time at Akamai helping the largest Websites on the Internet run faster and more secure).

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Foreword xiii

1 The Evolution of HTTP 1

HTTP/0.9 and 1.0 2

HTTP/1.1 3

Beyond 1.1 4

SPDY 4

HTTP/2 4

2 HTTP/2 Quick Start 7

Up and Running 7

Get a Certificate 8

Use an Online Generator 8

Self Signed 8

Let's Encrypt 8

Get and Run Your First HTTP/2 Server 9

Pick a Browser 10

3 How and Why We Hack the Web 11

Performance Challenges Today 11

The Anatomy of a Web Page Request 11

Critical Performance 14

The Problems with HTTP/1 16

Web Performance Techniques 21

Best Practices for Web Performance 22

Anti-Patterns 30

Summary 31

4 Transition to HTTP/2 33

Browser Support 33

Moving to TLS 34

Undoing HTTP 1.1 "Optimizations" 36

Third Parties 38

Supporting Older Clients 38

Summary 39

5 The HTTP/2 Protocol 41

Layers of HTTP/2 41

The Connection 42

Frames 44

Streams 47

Messages 48

Flow Control 51

Priority 52

Server Push 53

Pushing an Object 53

Choosing What to Push 55

Header Compression (HPACK) 56

On the Wire 58

A Simple GET 58

Summary 63

6 HTTP/2 Performance 65

Client Implementations 65

Latency 67

Packet Loss 70

Server Push 72

Time to First Byte (TTFB) 74

Third Parties 76

HTTP/2 Anti-Patterns 81

Domain Sharding 81

Inlining 82

Concatenating 82

Cookie-less Domains 82

Spriting 82

Prefetch 83

Real-World Performance 83

Performance Measurement Methodology 84

Study 1 facebook.com 84

Study 2 yahoo.com 86

Summary 89

7 HTTP/2 Implementations 91

Desktop Web Browsers 91

TLS Only 91

Disabling HTTP/2 92

Support for HTTP/2 Server Push 92

Connection Coalescing 92

HTTP/2 Debugging Tools 92

Beta Channel 93

Mobile 93

Mobile App Support 93

Servers, Proxies, and Caches 94

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) 95

Summary 95

8 Debugging h2 97

Web Browser Developer Tools 97

Chrome Developer Tools 97

Firefox Developer Tools 104

Debugging h2 on iOS Using Charles Prosy 106

Debugging h2 on Android 108

WebPagetest 109

OpenSSL 109

OpenSSL Commands 110

nghttp2 110

Using nghttp 110

Curl 112

Using curl 112

h2i 114

Wireshark 115

Summary 116

9 What Is Next? 117

TCP or UDP? 117

QUIC 118

TLS 1.3 119

HTTP/3? 120

Summary 120

A HTTP/2 Frames 121

B Tools Reference 131

Index 133