CDN company Cloudflare has announced support for HTTP/3, the new standard of the web that would make the Internet faster, more secure, and more reliable for everyone. Cloudflare has been collaborating with industry peers, including Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, to bring HTTP/3 to the masses and progress the Internet into the future.
“Pushing forward next-generation protocols is part of our mission to help build a better Internet,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “Previously, the benefits of HTTP/3 were limited to the Internet giants like Facebook and Google. Now, we’re democratizing access to the next generation of Internet technologies by bringing HTTP/3 to everyone, for free.”
The HTTP Protocol
HTTP is the protocol modern websites, APIs, apps, and browsers are built on. Older versions of HTTP would suffer from problems that frustrate users operating in real world conditions. HTTP/3, built on top of QUIC, is designed for the “modern” Internet. It would help speed up connections and make use of the web “more reliable and secure,” especially for mobile devices.
“In 2015, Cloudflare helped pioneer the widespread use of HTTP/2 and today HTTP/2 is the dominant standard used by millions every day,” said John Graham-Cumming, CTO of Cloudflare. “As we roll out HTTP/3 at scale, we expect millions to use it before the end of the month and help upgrade the web once again.”
Staying up to date on the latest protocols would be vital to get the most secure and performant Internet experience. Older protocols get ripped out and replaced, meaning anyone lagging behind eventually gets cut off. Innovations in the HTTP/3 standard would include:
- Encryption by default – Connections are automatically encrypted with faster connection establishment than the traditional combination of TCP handshake and TLS negotiation.
- Improved performance – Through the elimination of head of line blocking, addition of zero round trip time connection establishment, simplification of loss recovery, and other changes to make connections more robust, performance would be improved. According to Cloudflare, this is especially true in the suboptimal network conditions often experienced by mobile devices.
- Support for network migration – Connections can move across networks and IP addresses without interruption.
