Re: something I don't get about the current plan...

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 06:56:37PM +0100, Roland Zink wrote:
> 5) Using a separate port would help to separate HTTP/1 and HTTP/2 
> infrastructures and will make the solution more reliable

In theory you're right. In practice it is more difficult to get a new
port working in the short term. While using an existing port immediately
tells you the other part is not willing to upgrade (but will not always
tell you so), another port will require a long timeout to expire before
realizing that the port is closed. Worse, with some SYN-protection
firewalls, the connection will establish but nothing will pass, making
you think the connection to the server was possible and that the server
is slow to respond.

If we were to bother users and have them wait 5 seconds for each site
they want to visit, we could do that. But they're not going to accept
this at all, and even if it only affects a minority it will be an issue
because they'll spread bad words about their last browser upgrade.

BTW it does not affect only browsers. Git has its own port (9418) and
still provides support for fetching over HTTP because it generally passes
firewalls much better. And for the record, even here at home I had to
unlock the port to use it.

And the situation is even worse with mobile phone operators where basically
nothing can pass through unless there's a transparent proxy to handle it,
because the port would remain close until they find the product that do
the MITM...

In fact if we said "in 5 years HTTP/2 will start using port 100", we could
expect that product designers would start supporting it and that by then
most deployed devices would be replaced with something working. But for
many, HTTP/2 is going to be ready tomorrow, not in 5 years.

Regards,
Willy

Received on Monday, 18 November 2013 05:14:26 UTC