Cloudflare, Google and Firefox to add support for HTTP/3, shifting away from TCP

[mongeese]

Forward-looking: There’s little the human species unanimously agree upon, but we’ve all been forced to shake hands on one thing: TCP (transmission control protocol). The fundamental base of all internet communications, TCP formed an essential part of HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) until last year when the first internet communication standard dropped it and HTTP/3, was approved. Now that standard has made its way from the drawing board and into Cloudflare’s servers, which get more traffic than Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Instagram, Bing, and Wikipedia combined.

Cloudflare is almost as vital to the internet as HTTP itself, providing protection from DDoS and other forms of attacks to a significant part of the internet. Now, their customers can toggle on HTTP/3 support from their dashboard, and any visitors to their sites will automatically be upgraded to HTTP/3 if their browser supports it.

That’s not likely to happen overnight however. Only Google’s Chrome Canary (pre-beta version) has full-fledged support for it and Mozilla believes HTTP/3 will be working in Firefox Nightly before the end of fall.

Now, HTTP/3 is a big deal. It’s the third major change to the language every website uses to communicate since the web was born thirty years ago.

TCP was designed in the 70s as a universal communication standard, though no one at the time expected it would be used for instantaneous communication like it is now. While it contains a lot of code unnecessary for use by most of the internet, it contains three golden features: reliability, the capacity to check for lost data; order, the ability to put mixed-up packages into the order they were sent; and error-checking, the power to check for corrupted data. HTTP/2 employs a restructured TCP and is now used by about 40% of the internet.

HTTP/3 ditches TCP for the Google-developed QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Protocol). QUIC is built on UDP (user datagram protocol), which trades TCP’s reliability and order functions for an increase in simplicity and speed. Fortunately, however, Google’s engineers were able to add back the essentials in creating QUIC, while keeping the speed benefits. It’s also more secure and retains support for TLS (transport layer security).

HTTP/3 is presently used by 3% of websites according to w3techs but expect that number to rise rapidly with Cloudflare and Google on its side.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/82111-cloudflare-google-firefox-add-support-http3-shifting-away.html

 

[Uncle Al]

Ah hem ..... the web was born a little more than 30 years ago. The first successful site to site connections were around 1985. Of course, that was before the use of Apple's hypercard technology with evolved to the standard graphical interface, but it was otherwise just as functional ..... or are you talking about Al Gore says he invented it ....... LOL

 

[Squid Surprise]

Ah hem ..... the web was born a little more than 30 years ago. The first successful site to site connections were around 1985. Of course, that was before the use of Apple's hypercard technology with evolved to the standard graphical interface, but it was otherwise just as functional ..... or are you talking about Al Gore says he invented it ....... LOL

Apparently your reading skills are lacking.... the article didn’t say anything about when the internet was invented.... the TCP protocol predates the internet - and was invented in the 1970s...

You’re welcome...

 

[Evernessince]

Ah hem ..... the web was born a little more than 30 years ago. The first successful site to site connections were around 1985. Of course, that was before the use of Apple's hypercard technology with evolved to the standard graphical interface, but it was otherwise just as functional ..... or are you talking about Al Gore says he invented it ....... LOL

Apparently your reading skills are lacking.... the article didn’t say anything about when the internet was invented.... the TCP protocol predates the internet - and was invented in the 1970s...

You’re welcome...

Keep it civil everyone, makes mistakes. It's how you handle those mistakes that matter.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Keep it civil everyone, makes mistakes. It's how you handle those mistakes that matter.

Like punctuation mistakes?

 

[Evernessince]

Like punctuation mistakes?

100% correct

 

[NahNood]

"Google’s engineers were able to add...." -- Uhoh, what else did they add, I wonder??

 

[tomkaten]

Keep it civil everyone, makes mistakes. It's how you handle those mistakes that matter.

Like punctuation mistakes?

And concordance mistakes. I think "matters" is the correct form of that verb, but I might be wrong, as my English grammar studying years are way past me now.

 

[Uncle Al]

Ah hem ..... the web was born a little more than 30 years ago. The first successful site to site connections were around 1985. Of course, that was before the use of Apple's hypercard technology with evolved to the standard graphical interface, but it was otherwise just as functional ..... or are you talking about Al Gore says he invented it ....... LOL

Apparently your reading skills are lacking.... the article didn’t say anything about when the internet was invented.... the TCP protocol predates the internet - and was invented in the 1970s...

You’re welcome...

Sorry junior, you must have flunked the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade ..... it was very clearly stated:
"Now, HTTP/3 is a big deal. It’s the third major change to the language every website uses to communicate since the web was born thirty years ago."

 

[DelJo63]

HTTP/3 ditches TCP for the Google-developed QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Protocol). QUIC is built on UDP (user datagram protocol), which trades TCP’s reliability and order functions for an increase in simplicity and speed. .... It’s also more secure and retains support for TLS (transport layer security).

Packets are still packets and while less overhead in UDP does increase speed, it is no more secure than TCP.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Sorry junior, you must have flunked the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade ..... it was very clearly stated:
"Now, HTTP/3 is a big deal. It’s the third major change to the language every website uses to communicate since the web was born thirty years ago."

And yet your original comment blasted this article by stating that the web was created 30ish years ago - exactly what you have quoted here!!

Care to withdraw your first post now?

 

[Evernessince]

And concordance mistakes. I think "matters" is the correct form of that verb, but I might be wrong, as my English grammar studying years are way past me now.

Actually my usage of matter there was correct.

I preceded "matter" with "that", the grammatical usages of which is the following

"referring to a specific thing previously mentioned, known, or understood."

Using the plural noun form "matters" would be incorrect as it is not singular. For example: Man, that dogs are really huge!.

It doesn't work.

 

[tomkaten]

"A matter of life and death" - matter = noun.
"It's how you handle those mistakes that matter" or, in other words, "How you handle those mistakes is what matters" = verb. The subject of that subordinate sentence is "it" from the preceding one.

But screw grammar anyway, I don't want to be that guy

 

[Evernessince]

"A matter of life and death" - matter = noun.
"It's how you handle those mistakes that matter" or, in other words, "How you handle those mistakes is what matters" = verb. The subject of that subordinate sentence is "it" from the preceding one.

But screw grammar anyway, I don't want to be that guy

Actually I think you are right. I was thinking of "matter" in it's noun form but it just doesn't make sense in this sentence. I would definitely need to reword the sentence as "mistakes that matters" just doesn't sound right. The example you gave was good. Thanks for pointing that out, I definitely need to brush up.

 

[urbanman2004]

Keep it civil everyone, makes mistakes. It's how you handle those mistakes that matter.

Like punctuation mistakes?

And concordance mistakes. I think "matters" is the correct form of that verb, but I might be wrong, as my English grammar studying years are way past me now.

Think he meant to include, "everyone" before "makes," but it's lacking due to his oversight.

 

[kira setsu]

My interest went straight to fear when I read "google developed"

I'm not a dev of any sort but it seems wrong to give google this much leeway?

 

[m3tavision]

My interest went straight to fear when I read "google developed"

I'm not a dev of any sort but it seems wrong to give google this much leeway?

This^

Google is too big, controls too much and abuses too many laws. It is time that Google becomes a choice, and not just shoved down your throats, unavoidable.

Google wants to know who you are, at all times, even if you don't android, or google. They steal my information, from others.

 

[Hollow]

My interest went straight to fear when I read "google developed"

I'm not a dev of any sort but it seems wrong to give google this much leeway?

Wow tell us more about your new conspiracy theories.

Please answer to my little survey:
First, why would google add a protocol level tracking tool when they just want to make it faster and already have your browser (google chrome) and the search engine most people use?
Second, why would google track you especially and why would your informations be valuable?
Last one, all the informations you will give can be held against you and can be used by anyone browsing that page, is that a problem?

 

[kira setsu]

My interest went straight to fear when I read "google developed"

I'm not a dev of any sort but it seems wrong to give google this much leeway?

Wow tell us more about your new conspiracy theories.

Please answer to my little survey:
First, why would google add a protocol level tracking tool when they just want to make it faster and already have your browser (google chrome) and the search engine most people use?
Second, why would google track you especially and why would your informations be valuable?
Last one, all the informations you will give can be held against you and can be used by anyone browsing that page, is that a problem?

calm down man,

like I said I'm not a dev or anything, just a dude who reads tech articles on the web,

but, usually when I hear of things like this it comes from some sort of consortium or think tank, not just one company that claims to be good, maybe google has just made something that'll be better but at the same time I just want to know is it fine for them to be the ones in the lead?

 

[MonsterZero]

HTTP/3 ditches TCP for the Google-developed QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Protocol). QUIC is built on UDP (user datagram protocol), which trades TCP’s reliability and order functions for an increase in simplicity and speed. .... It’s also more secure and retains support for TLS (transport layer security).

Packets are still packets and while less overhead in UDP does increase speed, it is no more secure than TCP.

Agreed, for now I block all QUIC traffic incoming and outgoing. They can use regular TCP like everyone else.

The main reason it hasn't happened= go google Block QUIC and see the results! Literally everyone is blocking it because while the latency is great, you can't inspect the web traffic to see what's happening. It's a security nightmare.

 

[m3tavision]

Wow tell us more about your new conspiracy theories.

Please answer to my little survey:
First, why would google add a protocol level tracking tool when they just want to make it faster and already have your browser (google chrome) and the search engine most people use?
Second, why would google track you especially and why would your informations be valuable?
Last one, all the informations you will give can be held against you and can be used by anyone browsing that page, is that a problem?

You sound like you don't care that google collects.. probably don't remember the internet before google and how People were autonomous.

 

[Nilbud]

My interest went straight to fear when I read "google developed"

I'm not a dev of any sort but it seems wrong to give google this much leeway?

My interest went straight to fear when I read "google developed"

I'm not a dev of any sort but it seems wrong to give google this much leeway?

Ignorant baseless fear is less than nothing.

 

[Nilbud]

This^

Google is too big, controls too much and abuses too many laws. It is time that Google becomes a choice, and not just shoved down your throats, unavoidable.

Google wants to know who you are, at all times, even if you don't android, or google. They steal my information, from others.

Figments of your imagination are irrelevant.

 

[Darth Shiv]

My interest went straight to fear when I read "google developed"

I'm not a dev of any sort but it seems wrong to give google this much leeway?

This sort of research and advancement of web standards is open. Google has VERY good researchers in this area - making web communication is easy to justify and creates a lot of cost savings. They proposed a solution with evidence to back it up and it's not like there weren't extremely clever researchers reviewing the proposal from many very large communications and IT companies to pass a change like this. You can't sneak in backdoors into proposals like this. Google isn't proposing TLS standards which have that sort of susceptibility. They are proposing change to a different component.

 

[waterytowers]

I have worked on a UDP based protocol that provides a smaller packet overhead and includes encryption, compression, ordering and reliability. It is still in use in production today. So I would love to see what they have done. No need to be scared of an open protocol it's just a way to improve the bandwidth and latency of browsing. Never been a big fan of text protocols being used over a WAN. As for tracing packets that's what Wireshark was built for, just need a new plugin for the new protocol.