Wendy, I agree with your analysis below. HTTP/2 provides many advantages over HTTP/1.1 but they do not apply to all use cases and IMO ALTO is one of the use cases where HTTP/2 doesn't provide a significant advantage. The exception to that might be server push as you note but even then I suspect the additional complexity of HTTP/2 probably outweighs the benefit of server push in the ALTO use case given I do not imagine that really timely updates of ALTO information is that critical to most ALTO clients (& clients that really require rapid updates can always make regular revalidation requests to the ALTO server).
Ben > On 2 Feb 2015, at 19:32, Wendy Roome <[email protected]> wrote: > > HTTP version 2 is approaching final approval; > http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-http2/ gives the latest > draft. > > What do people think of the HTTP 2 extensions with respect to ALTO? > > My take is that while the new features will be wonderful for many > commercial web sites, they have little benefit to ALTO. The only exception > is for server-initiated updates, which could take advantage of the fact > that HTTP 2 officially supports server-push. > > But other than that, I don't see how the new HTTP 2 features would help > ALTO. They do not let us provide new services, or let existing services > work more efficiently. Yes, HTTP 2 does provide a better way for a client > to pipeline multiple GETs on a single TCP stream. But it is not that much > better than HTTP 1.1 Keep-Alive, and I doubt that clients will pipeline > many requests anyway. At least not the way a browser does for an > image-heavy page. > > What do the rest of you think about ALTO & HTTP 2? > > > An ALTO client & server can always use HTTP 2, of course. HTTP 2 allows a > client to initiate an 1.1 connection, with an ³I can handle http 2 if you > can² header, and an HTTP 2 aware server can respond with HTTP 2. But that > is transparent to the ALTO protocol specification. > > Oh yes, the disadvantages of HTTP 2 are that it is much more complex than > HTTP 1.1, it will be a while before standard HTTP client/server libraries > support it, and any proxies between the client & server must also support > HTTP 2. > > - Wendy Roome > > > > > _______________________________________________ > alto mailing list > [email protected] > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/alto _______________________________________________ alto mailing list [email protected] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/alto
