HTTP/2 — The basis for gRPC
In the previous article, we have seen HTTP/1.1 in detail and what the browsers perform in the background to make it faster. In this article, we will see HTTP2 in detail.
Understanding HTTP2 is very essential for every backend developer as, in the future, HTTP2 will be used widely. Today almost all web servers and browsers support HTTP2, even the browsers on mobile phones do support HTTP2.
1. Introduction
HTTP/2 is derived from the SPDY protocol which was developed by Google. At the highest level, HTTP/2 doesn’t change the semantics of HTTP/1 such as methods, status codes, headers, and URIs. But it introduces new ways of how the data is framed and transported between the client and server.
The primary goals for HTTP/2 are to reduce latency using techniques like;
- Request and Response Multiplexing
- Minimize the protocol overhead using header compression
- Support for request Prioritization
- Server push
To implement the above requirements, there are other supporting features such as new flow control, error handling and etc were implemented. But the above features are the most important that every web developer should understand. These features enable more efficient use of network resources and more efficient processing of messages through the use of binary message framing.
