Standards organization adopts http/2 standard

The IETF HTTP Working Group has approved the http/2 specification. The new specification succeeds the http 1.1 specification after sixteen years and should, among other things, enable faster loading of web pages.

Now that the HTTP Working Group has completed the HTTP/2 specification, the draft will be given ‘request-for-comments’ status for editors, Mark Nottingham, chair of the working group, wrote on his blog. Some input can still be given during this phase. Subsequently, the standard will be officially published by the IETF.

One of the improvements that http/2 brings is the multiplexing option, where multiple http requests from the browser can be sent bundled to a web server. This significantly reduces the total number of active connections compared to http 1.1, resulting in speed gains. The use of encryption via the tls protocol also becomes more efficient with http/2. HTTP header compression is also possible.

The http/2 standard is largely based on the spdy protocol developed by Google. Unlike the spdy protocol, the http/2 standard no longer requires to enable tls encryption, but Mozilla and Google have announced that Firefox and Chrome will not accept http/2 connections without tls.

With the completion of the http/2 standard, there will be a replacement for the http 1.1 protocol, one of the building blocks of today’s internet, after sixteen years. It will take some time before http/2 becomes the dominant standard, because a lot of software will have to be adapted to handle the new http standard.