Google: quic protocol makes loading web pages faster

According to Google, the self-developed quic protocol can provide a significant improvement in the loading speed of internet pages. The company has recently tested the protocol and reports that a large proportion of connections benefit from the protocol.

The results of the tests can be found on Google’s blog. Quic, which stands for Quick UDP Internet Connections, was introduced back in 2013 and has been tested by the internet giant ever since. The protocol works via udp and can establish secure connections similar to the commonly used tls. The intent is to reduce the number of times server and user communicate back and forth to establish a connection.

For example, no round trips need to take place if the server and client have already ‘talked’ to each other. That in contrast to tcp+tls where this is necessary. Even if the server and client have not communicated with each other before, the number of back-and-forth connections with quic is less. All in all, this results in speed gains. Google tests show that 75 percent of connections benefit from communication via quic instead of tcp+tls because round trips are no longer needed.

In addition to reducing the number of round trips, quic is designed with the aim of reducing packet loss. For example, there are correction mechanisms to ensure that packets with errors do not have to be retransmitted. In addition, fewer packets have to be lost than with other communication protocols. The techniques used provide speed improvements, especially with slow connections, according to Google. For those in the top 1 percent with slowest connection, the speed gain can be as much as 1 second when loading the Google main page. When using YouTube over slow connections, quic reduces buffer messages by 30 percent, according to tests.

Google has recently been testing quic via Chrome users connecting to the company’s services. About half of these connections are now established via quic. Due to the successful tests, Google plans to submit quic as a web standard, just as it did with the spdy protocol. However, there is still some work to be done, according to the web giant.