- From: Mike Belshe <mike@belshe.com>
- Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:18:03 -0700
- To: James M Snell <jasnell@gmail.com>
- Cc: ietf-http-wg@w3.org
- Message-ID: <CABaLYCswjWjNsBmFgJOWSCUZ+Nxu90NyRc+H_CRym9L7QX7ysg@mail.gmail.com>
i like the direction of this. a good blend of a registry and extension
headers.
i wasn't quite sure how you got to the 6 byte compressed header, tho.
mike
On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 11:51 PM, James M Snell <jasnell@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok... spent some time this evening playing around with the header frame
> syntax a bit more to see what further optimizations could be made and to
> see if the binary encoded header id's made any noticeable difference in
> size and ease of processing.
>
> Here's the revised structure I played around with...
>
> 1. Within a HEADER block, I assume two possible types of headers,
> REGISTERED and EXTENSION. A REGISTERED header is one that would be known to
> the registrar and assigned a numeric id and a codepage. If the codepage is
> 0, the implication is that the header is MUST UNDERSTAND and is considered
> one of the core headers for the basic operation of the protocol. Codepages
> 1-9 are MUST-IGNORE... that is, if a user-agent or server comes across a
> header on these code pages that is not understood, the header can simply be
> ignored. Codepages 10-14 are PRIVATE USE, with Codepage 10 being reserved
> for MUST UNDERSTAND PRIVATE USE headers. EXTENSION headers are simple name
> value pairs essentially as they exist today.
>
> 2. Within extension headers, the name portion MUST be ASCII and MUST NOT
> be longer than 255 bytes (quite generous really).
>
> 3. Values may be binary or character based, as indicated by a flags field.
> Values may be up to max(int32) in length.
>
> 4. Registered HTTP Methods can be identified by numeric value. Extension
> Methods can be identified by character value.
>
> 5. The structure for REGISTERED HEADERS is...
>
> +------------------------------+
> |0| id (15-bit)| flags(8-bit) |
> +------------------------------+
> | len (32-bit) | value |
> +------------------------------+
>
> 6. The structure for EXTENSION HEADERS is...
>
> +------------------------------+
> |1| flags(7-bit) | namelen (8) |
> +------------------------------+
> | name | val len (32) | value |
> +------------------------------+
>
> Assuming the following registered headers...
>
> public static final short VERSION = 1;
> public static final short METHOD = 2;
> public static final short HOST = 3;
> public static final short SESSION = 4;
> public static final short CHARSET = 5;
> public static final short REQUEST_URI = 6;
> public static final short ACCEPT_LANG = 4097;
>
> And the following registered methods...
>
> public static final byte GET = 1;
> public static final byte POST = 2;
> public static final byte PUT = 3;
> public static final byte DELETE = 4;
> public static final byte PATCH = 5;
> public static final byte HEAD = 6;
> public static final byte OPTIONS = 7;
>
> Let's assume that what we want to to encode a HTTP GET for resource:
> http://www.example.org/this/is/the/request?is=it¬=beautiful
>
> With a session identifier of "session_key", ACCEPT_LANG = en-US and
> default charset encoding for all character based header values is
> "US-ASCII"... Let's also add an extension header "ext" with value "foo"...
>
> The Version header can be encoded as:
> {0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 2, 0}
>
> The GET Method header can be encoded as:
> {0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1}
>
> The Host header would be encoded as:
> { 0, 3, 1, 0, 0, 0, 15, 119, 119, 119,
> 46, 101, 120, 97, 109, 112, 108, 101, 46, 111,
> 114, 103}
>
> The Accept-Lang header would be encoded as:
> {16, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 5, 'e', 'n', '-', 'U', 'S'}
>
> The Extension header ext: foo would be encoded as:
> {-128, 1, 3, 101, 120, 116, 0, 0, 0, 3, 102, 111, 111}
>
> The entire header block is encoded into a structure of 145 bytes in length;
>
> [8, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 2, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 3, 1, 0, 0, 0,
> 15, 119, 119, 119, 46, 101, 120, 97, 109, 112, 108, 101, 46, 111, 114, 103,
> 0, 6, 1, 0, 0, 0, 40, 47, 116, 104, 105, 115, 47, 105, 115, 47, 116, 104,
> 101, 47, 114, 101, 113, 117, 101, 115, 116, 63, 105, 115, 61, 105, 116, 38,
> 110, 111, 116, 61, 98, 101, 97, 117, 116, 105, 102, 117, 108, 0, 5, 1, 0,
> 0, 0, 8, 117, 115, 45, 97, 115, 99, 105, 105, 0, 4, 1, 0, 0, 0, 11, 115,
> 101, 115, 115, 105, 111, 110, 95, 107, 101, 121, 16, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 5, 101,
> 110, 45, 85, 83, -128, 1, 3, 101, 120, 116, 0, 0, 0, 3, 102, 111, 111]
>
> By comparison, the same structure encoded using the existing SPDY HEADER
> block would require 208 bytes sans compression.
>
> After applying compression of the block using the SPDY dictionary, the
> block compresses into 6 compact bytes.
>
> [120, 63, -29, -58, -89, -62]
> Assuming this structure was used within a SPDY_STREAM message,
> unencrypted, a proxy/router that is scanning the headers to determine where
> to route the SYN_STREAM too would need only to look at the first two bytes
> of each header to determine if the header is either the HOST, METHOD,
> REQUEST_URI, VERSION or SESSION identifier. This scheme should prove to be
> significantly faster to scan and perform operations on than the current
> all-text-key-pair model. As always, tho, your mileage may vary.
>
> /end-experiment
>
> - James
>
> On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 3:16 PM, James M Snell <jasnell@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This note is intended to provide some additional thoughts for discussion
>> around the design and use of SPDY as the possible basis for HTTP/2.0. The
>> intent is to provide fuel for discussion... comments are definitely welcome.
>>
>> As discussed within draft-tarreau-httpbis-network-friendly-00, and as has
>> been mentioned several times in discussion on list, handling of headers
>> within the current SPDY framing, and in particular the layering of HTTP/1.1
>> messages into SPDY frames is less than optimal. There is significant wasted
>> space, duplication, etc that -- strictly speaking -- really isn't
>> necessary. While I recognize that the following increases the basic
>> complexity of the protocol, it allows fairly significant optimization
>> following the same basic lines of reasoning expressed in
>> draft-tarreau-httpbis-network-friendly-00.
>>
>> Section 2.6.1 of the SPDY draft defines header blocks using the following
>> format:
>>
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | Number of Name/Value pairs (int32) |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | Length of name (int32) |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | Name (string) |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | Length of value (int32) |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | Value (string) |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | (repeats) |
>>
>> This structure is used within SYN_STREAM and HEADERS frames.
>>
>> What I propose is the following revised structure:
>>
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | Number of Headers (int32) |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> |T| Flags (7) | Length (24) |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | Data |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> |T| Flags (7) | Length (24) |
>> +-------------------------------------
>> | Data |
>> +-------------------------------------
>> | (repeats) |
>>
>> T is a single bit identifying the Header Type. There are two types..
>> REGISTERED (0) and EXTENSION (1)
>>
>> Flags provides flags for the specific header field. The flag 0x1
>> indicates that the header value contains Character Data. If not set, the
>> value is assumed to consist of raw octets. 0x2 indicates that the value is
>> compressed.
>>
>> Length is an unsigned 24-bit value specifying the number of octets after
>> the length field.
>>
>> When the T bit is NOT set, the Header field is a REGISTERED Header, the
>> structure of which is:
>>
>> +------------------------------------+
>> |0| Flags (7) | Length (24) |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | ID | Value Length (int32) |Value...|
>> +------------------------------------+
>>
>> The ID is a 32-bit number uniquely identifying the registered field. Each
>> is assigned by the registrar. For instance, the "Host" field could have a
>> registered value of "1", the "Accept-Lang" field could have a registered
>> value of "6", and so forth.
>>
>> The Value Length is a 32-bit value indicating the length of the value.
>>
>> If Flag 0x1 is set, the value is assumed to contain character data. When
>> set, the value MUST be preceded by a single unsigned 8-bit integer
>> identifying the character encoding utilized. The values are assigned by the
>> registrar. For instance, US-ASCII could have a registered value of "1",
>> while "UTF-8" could have a registered value of "2".
>>
>> For example:
>>
>> +------------------------------------+
>> |0| 0000001 | 24 |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | 1 | 16 | 1 | www.example.org |
>> +------------------------------------+
>>
>> This Header record indicates a REGISTERED header containing character
>> content, the header ID = 1, the charset used is US-ASCII and the value is "
>> www.example.org". The header is expressed with a total of 28 bytes.
>>
>> When the T bit IS set, the Header field is an EXTENSION Header, the
>> structure of which is:
>>
>> +------------------------------------+
>> |0| Flags (7) | Length (24) |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | Length of name (int32) |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | Name (string) |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | Length of value (int32) |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | Value |
>> +------------------------------------+
>>
>> For example.. an extension header that contains raw binary data...
>>
>> +------------------------------------+
>> |0| 0000000 | Length (24) |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | 5 |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | x-foo |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | 4 |
>> +------------------------------------+
>> | {raw bytes} |
>> +------------------------------------+
>>
>> The header is expressed with a total of 21 bytes.
>>
>> The same flags apply. 0x1 indicates that the value is character data. If
>> 0x1 is not set, the value contains raw octets. The key difference is that
>> there is a 32-bit name length and variable length name field in place of
>> the 32-bit ID field in the REGISTERED header. All other details remain the
>> same.
>>
>> As is currently the case in SPDY, if a single header value contains
>> multiple values, each can be separated using a single NUL (0) byte.
>>
>> There are several advantages to this approach:
>>
>> 1. Commonly used header names are omitted in favor of registered, known
>> numeric IDs, saving space and making it more efficient to scan over
>> commonly used headers. For instance, intermediaries that route requests
>> based on common headers such as Host etc could choose to ignore EXTENSION
>> header fields entirely, and scan only for the ID's of the fields they are
>> interested in, rather than having to parse the entire bag of header names.
>>
>> 2. Header values can be expressed as raw octets or character data.
>> Currently, mechanisms within HTTP require developers to muck around with
>> Base64 encoding or other encodings when including detail within a header.
>> This approach would eliminate that extra step. For instance, if I wanted to
>> have a Content-Integrity header whose value is an hmac digest, I would be
>> able to drop the raw bytes of the digest into the header value rather than
>> base64 or hex encoding it into an ASCII string, saving CPU cycles and
>> reducing the amount of data that must be transmitted.
>>
>> 3. Header values that contain character data would not be limited to
>> US-ASCII. Multiple charset encodings would be allowed... obviously this has
>> a whole slew of issues associated with it that need to be carefully
>> considered. The charset encoding flag could be dropped, if necessary, from
>> this proposal.
>>
>> For HTTP/1.1 Compatibility, each REGISTERED Header would be mapped to a
>> known, registered HTTP/1.1 header, allowing one to one translation from the
>> optimized form to the HTTP/1.1 form. Binary values would be base64-encoded.
>> If a particular header does not allow for Base64 encoded values under
>> HTTP/1.1, the down-level recipient would have the option of responding with
>> an appropriate 404 response.
>>
>> That's it for now. There are additional considerations to be given to the
>> specific selection of header fields to include within the SYN_STREAM vs.
>> follow-on HEADERS frames but that's a separate conversation. As always,
>> feedback is welcome...
>>
>> - James
>>
>>
>
Received on Tuesday, 17 July 2012 07:18:43 UTC