Almost everything you visit on the web at one point or another uses a special protocol known as the Hyptertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Ever since the year 1999, you’ve been using HTTP version 1.1. This has been the ongoing standard for many years until Google made an announcement on February 10, 2015 that its browser will be adding full support of what is now known as HTTP/2. This sounds like utter gibberish to some, but that’s because there’s no description of what HTTP/2 does differently. To understand this, we need to explore exactly what this new protocol version does, and how it is similar to the version of HTTP we’ve been using for nearly two decades.
What Does HTTP/2 Achieve?Whenever a new protocol version is developed, it needs actual concrete goals. The most obvious goal is backward compatible with its predecessor, HTTP 1.1. Without that ability, every server in the world will have to switch to HTTP/2 for you to be able to browse their websites.
While maintaining compatibility with the older version, this new protocol will make use of advanced techniques as measures against latency, making pages load faster. This is the primary goal, the problem that HTTP/2 plans to address most aggressively.
Other improvements include added security and compatibility with reverse proxies.
In the big scheme of things, HTTP/2 is not going to be that much different from HTTP 1.1. As you surf the internet, the strongest effect you will feel is that webpages will load significantly faster as long as they support the new version.
How Does HTTP/2 Make The Web Faster?
