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Why We Love QUIC and HTTP/3

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Re: Why We Love QUIC and HTTP/3

#3
post #2

aka let's just put everything in the application layer because solving it at the protocol layer is too difficult.

Some people implement network stack in user-space. Abstractions are good, but they incur performance penalty or other restrictions and sometimes you need to remove those abstractions. I guess, web is too important today, so optimizing it might worth it, even if that requires unconventional measures.

Re: Why We Love QUIC and HTTP/3

#5
It seems that QUIC is a new transfer protocol created to replace TCP. QUIC uses UDP and LTS/3 and solves the head of line problem addressed in HTTP2. Furthermore, sending the data encrypted allows QUIC to begin transfering data earlier. An experiment by google shows that in connections with high latency or loss QUIC gives a 15% reduction in highest latency.

Re: Why We Love QUIC and HTTP/3

#6
post #2

aka let's just put everything in the application layer because solving it at the protocol layer is too difficult.

Is this not a valid approach then? The issues of ossification and strict allowance for just known protocols appear to be big enough to cause things like SCTP to not have a viable, widespread use in their future.

Re: Why We Love QUIC and HTTP/3

#7
post #2

aka let's just put everything in the application layer because solving it at the protocol layer is too difficult.

It runs over UDP so they did go back to the protocol layer when designing a solution. Thats the whole point is to fix the tcp halt and retransmit delay when a packet gets lost.

Re: Why We Love QUIC and HTTP/3

#8
post #2

aka let's just put everything in the application layer because solving it at the protocol layer is too difficult.

The article mentions gives an example of why it’s difficult to improve TCP further.

TCP Fast Open was standardized 8 years ago and is barely used. This is because updating TCP requires kernel updates, which just isn’t going to happen on most mobile devices.

Thus, moving the protocol to userspace makes a lot of sense.

Re: Why We Love QUIC and HTTP/3

#9
This is a timely post, since IETF 104 is happening this week in Prague[1]. The QUIC working group will be meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday to make progress on standardization[2].

[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/104/agenda.html

[2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-quic-transport/

Re: Why We Love QUIC and HTTP/3

#10
post #8
post #2

aka let's just put everything in the application layer because solving it at the protocol layer is too difficult.

The article mentions gives an example of why it’s difficult to improve TCP further. TCP Fast Open was standardized 8 years ago and is barely used. This is because updating TCP requires kernel updates, which just isn’t going to happen on most mobile devices. Thus, moving the protocol to userspace makes a lot of sense.

That doesn't sound like a particularly convincing reason. In order for mobile devices to benefit from HTTP/3, commonly used HTTP client libraries will have to be updated. Which usually happens on a similar timescale as kernel updates anyway.
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