Chapter 2. The road to HTTP/2

This chapter covers
  • Examining the performance problems in HTTP/1.1
  • Understanding the workarounds for HTTP/1.1 performance issues
  • Investigating real-world examples of HTTP/1 problems
  • SPDY and how it improved HTTP/1
  • How SPDY was standardized into HTTP/2
  • How web performance changes under HTTP/2

Why do we need HTTP/2? The web works fine under HTTP/1, doesn’t it? What is HTTP/2 anyway? In this chapter, I answer these questions with real-world examples and show why HTTP/2 is not only necessary, but also well overdue.

HTTP/1.1 is what most of the internet is built upon and has been functioning reasonably well for a 20-year-old technology. During that time, however, web use has exploded, and we’ve ...

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