Zstandard RFC 8878

#1

Post by itroot » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

Zstandard RFC 8878
datatracker.ietf.org

Re: Zstandard RFC 8878

#2

Post by felixhandte » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

As someone on the Zstd team, I'm always happy to see it on HN! I'm curious though what motivates the submission?

Re: Zstandard RFC 8878

#3

Post by jeffbee » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

Does this mean the Zstd magic number is now cast in stone?

Re: Zstandard RFC 8878

#4

Post by cornstalks » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #3

Does this mean the Zstd magic number is now cast in stone?

It's an Informational RFC, not a Standards Track RFC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments#Status). That said, I think the magic number is pretty firmly established.

Re: Zstandard RFC 8878

#5

Post by vlovich123 » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 8:28 PM UTC

Is there a reason zstd isn’t popular for HTTP and only brotli and gzip see adoption?

Re: Zstandard RFC 8878

#6

Post by jhgb » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #5

Is there a reason zstd isn’t popular for HTTP and only brotli and gzip see adoption?

I assume it's because it's very new? That would seem like an obvious explanation.

Re: Zstandard RFC 8878

#7

Post by zinekeller » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #5

Is there a reason zstd isn’t popular for HTTP and only brotli and gzip see adoption?

Because Facebook doesn't have a browser.

(But seriously, Mozilla engineers have warned the Chrome team that they are too rush with the inclusion of Brotli, since that compression wars are heating up. They still proceeded though, which is unsurprising.)

Re: Zstandard RFC 8878

#8

Post by lifthrasiir » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #5

Is there a reason zstd isn’t popular for HTTP and only brotli and gzip see adoption?

Brotli was arguably designed specifically for the web, because it was originally used in the WOFF2 font format and also had a large amount of preset dictionary collected from the web (including HTML, CSS and JS fragments). Zstandard had no such consideration, and while it could be as efficient as Brotli with a correct dictionary it does have a less merit compared to Brotli in the web context.

Re: Zstandard RFC 8878

#9

Post by duskwuff » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #5

Is there a reason zstd isn’t popular for HTTP and only brotli and gzip see adoption?

Brotli has some pretty wild optimizations for web content, including a gigantic (~120 KB) predefined dictionary packed full of sequences commonly used in HTML/JS/CSS content. This gives it a huge advantage on small text files.

Re: Zstandard RFC 8878

#10

Post by stouset » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #3

Does this mean the Zstd magic number is now cast in stone?

Can you shed some light on why this might be something of concern?