HTTP/3

HTTP/3
International standardRFC 9114[1] (HTTP/3 also uses the completed QUIC protocol described in RFC 9000 and related RFCs such as RFC 9001)
Developed byIETF
IntroducedJune 2022
Websitehttps://httpwg.org/specs/rfc9114.html
Internet history timeline

Early research and development:

Merging the networks and creating the Internet:

Commercialization, privatization, broader access leads to the modern Internet:

Examples of Internet services:

HTTP/3 is the third major version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol used to exchange information on the World Wide Web, complementing the widely-deployed HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2. Unlike previous versions which relied on the well-established TCP (published in 1974),[2] HTTP/3 uses QUIC (officially introduced in 2021),[3] a multiplexed transport protocol built on UDP.[4]

HTTP/3 uses similar semantics compared to earlier revisions of the protocol, including the same request methods, status codes, and message fields, but encodes them and maintains session state differently. However, partially due to the protocol's adoption of QUIC, HTTP/3 has lower latency and loads more quickly in real-world usage when compared with previous versions: in some cases over four times as fast than with HTTP/1.1 (which, for many websites, is the only HTTP version deployed).[5][6]

As of September 2024, HTTP/3 is supported by 95% of major web browsers (though not enabled for all Safari users)[7] and 31% of the top 10 million websites.[8] It has been supported by Chromium (and derived projects including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Samsung Internet, and Opera)[9] since April 2020 and by Mozilla Firefox since May 2021.[7][10] Safari 14 implemented the protocol but it remains disabled by default.[11]

  1. ^ M. Bishop, ed. (June 2022). HTTP/3. Internet Engineering Task Force. doi:10.17487/RFC9114. ISSN 2070-1721. RFC 9114. Proposed Standard.
  2. ^ V. Cerf; Y. Dalal; C. Sunshine (December 1974). SPECIFICATION OF INTERNET TRANSMISSION CONTROL PROGRAM. Network Working Group. doi:10.17487/RFC0675. RFC 675. Obsolete. Obsoleted by RFC 7805. NIC 2. INWG 72.
  3. ^ J. Iyengar; M. Thomson, eds. (May 2021). QUIC: A UDP-Based Multiplexed and Secure Transport. Internet Engineering Task Force. doi:10.17487/RFC9000. ISSN 2070-1721. RFC 9000. Proposed Standard.
  4. ^ "What is HTTP/3?". Cloudflare. Archived from the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 12 July 2022.
  5. ^ Perna, Gianluca; Trevisan, Martino; Giordano, Danilo; Drago, Idilio (1 April 2022). "A first look at HTTP/3 adoption and performance". Computer Communications. 187: 115–124. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2022.02.005. hdl:11368/3025202. ISSN 0140-3664. S2CID 246936473.
  6. ^ "HTTP/3 is Fast". Request Metrics. Retrieved 1 July 2022.
  7. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference canIuse was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ "Usage of HTTP/3 for websites". World Wide Web Technology Surveys. W3Techs. Retrieved 11 August 2024.
  9. ^ "Enabling QUIC in tip-of-tree". groups.google.com. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
  10. ^ Damjanovic, Dragana (16 April 2021). "QUIC and HTTP/3 Support now in Firefox Nightly and Beta". Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog. Retrieved 17 April 2021.
  11. ^ "Safari 14 Release Notes". developer.apple.com. Retrieved 4 December 2020.