Http/3 will use Google’s http-about-quic instead of tcp

The Internet Engineering Task Force has chosen Google’s http-over-quic as the network protocol for http/3, the successor to the current http/2. This means that the upcoming http version will not be based on tcp.

IETF members have endorsed the proposal that http-over-quic be renamed to http/3 and that development by the QUIC Working Group be taken over by the HTTP Working Group. It is the second time that technology developed by Google has made it to HTTP standard. The 2015 http/2 standard built on Google’s spdy protocol.

Quic stands for Quick UDP Internet Connections and works via udp. Compared to tcp, the protocol provides significantly fewer round trips that are needed to establish a connection between client and server. Setting up secure SSL connections at tcp, for example, results in a significant increase in the number of requests and answers. With http-over-quic ssl is implemented by default and the current version uses the new tls 1.3.

By decreasing the amount of client-server negotiation, HTTP-over-quic improves network latency and allows web pages to load faster. Http-over-quic is the implementation of quic in the http protocol, as Google proposed to the IETF in July 2016 as a draft standard in 2016.

Chrome, Opera and Google’s servers, among others, already support quic. In addition, Facebook has started adoption, ZDNet writes.