Re: Implementation Notes on Server Push

Great feedback.

On 14 May 2013 12:14, Patrick McManus <pmcmanus@mozilla.com> wrote:
> 304's seem to be a common cause of wasted pushed streams. I would see
> servers respond with a 304 for index.html and still push 200 responses for
> a.css and b.js when in a non-push world that would have been either 1 or 3
> 304's. Maybe we should have a rule that you can only push to an assoc-stream
> of 2xx ?

I don't know if outright prohibition is necessary.  It might be that
a.css has changed, but index.html hasn't.  But I consider that
unlikely in the general case.  A word of caution seems appropriate.

> There is language in the spec that if the client resets a stream that it
> implicitly resets any associated streams too. That was complicated to
> implement and pretty much broke my stream state model internally - while
> researching it it appears that mod_spdy and chrome don't implement it at
> all. The spec has an editorial note about removing that feature and I favor
> that removal.

I added that text, so I tend to agree. :)

> I found flow control for pushed streams immensely helpful. It lets the
> client bound how much data can be pushed before there is a local GET matched
> up with that. Relatedly, I changed my default SETTINGS window size from a
> ~infinite value to be a smaller push-apropos value and then pipelined a
> window update with each odd SYN_STREAM to make pulled streams ~infinite
> again while preserving the smaller limit for push and this worked fine with
> all existing servers to my pleasant surprise. That seems to mean at least
> the spdy/3 windowing mechanism is simple enough for people to get right.

That's interesting.  Do you believe that it would be worthwhile
splitting the initial window size setting in two?  One for streams I
initiate, one for streams you initiate?  That would save you a window
update on every new stream.

> As with other parts of the spec, I was faced in some implementations with
> some very large data frames (90+KB) from servers when testing. Such frames
> are impervious to CANCEL or any mechanism we might use to change priorities
> driven by the client :(..  HTTP2 is doing the right thing by creating a
> smallish max frame size.

Small is good, but how small is small enough?

Received on Tuesday, 14 May 2013 23:58:00 UTC