Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by thinkloop | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

thinkloop

> and it unlocks performance improvements

I thought https added performance overhead, where does it improve it?

View on HN

They're gating HTTP/2 (and other new features) to HTTPS.

It "unlocks" them in the sense that the browser vendors don't lock the features on HTTPS like they do on HTTP. :P

Nope.

http://www.httpvshttps.com

https://www.httpvshttps.com

See also: https://istlsfastyet.com

This is a pretty bogus comparison; it's HTTP/2 versus HTTP/1.1.

It's HTTP/2 over TLS versus HTTP/1.1 without TLS.

Yes. The performance benefit isn't really TLS.

Given that "currently no browser supports HTTP/2 unencrypted" they're inseparable in the real world.

https://http2.github.io/faq/#does-http2-require-encryption

Right, but enabling TLS on an HTTP/1.1 site isn't going to generate that performance improvement. It's a bogus comparison.

Oh, I see what you mean. The relationship doesn't work both ways, and the benchmark might lead one to believe it does.

So it's a http2 vs http1 benchmark. Not a http vs https benchmark?

Right. HTTP/2 is only available with TLS, due to browser policies, so it necessarily requires TLS.

This means you need HTTPS if you want the performance wins of HTTP/2.

This doesn't mean that HTTPS is a performance win if you're still using HTTP/1.1. However, the "performance overhead" for TLS is negligible in practice.

Yes, so there are two major changes you'd need to get this performance benefit, not one, and if you just make the TLS change, your performance will (probably marginally) suffer, not improve. It's a bogus comparison.

Didn't you know that air fresheners make cars go faster? Just look at my Ferrari F450 with an freshener vs this Nissan Micra without one!

"Plaintext HTTP/1.1 is compared against encrypted HTTP/2 HTTPS"

LOL

Now show me how plaintext HTTP/2 is slower than HTTP/2 + TLS!

Practically speaking, plaintext HTTP/2 doesn't exist.

Your browser will not use HTTP/2 without TLS.

If only one could communicate with an HTTP/2 server without using one of the popular browsers... :(

EDIT: Wow, wait a sec, you actually can! You can actually use the HTTP/2 protocol outside of a web browser! Why didn't anyone tell me this before??

Reply on news.ycombinator.com